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UNIVERSITY
OF FLORIDA
LIB R A R Y

THE GIFT OF

Dr. J.R. Benton

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016 with funding from

University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries

https://archive.org/details/europeanhistoryn01lond

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

EUROPEAN HISTORY ,

NARRATED IN A SERIES OF

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS

EDITED AND ARRANGED BY

E. M. SEWELL and C. M. YONGE.

1003— 1154.

SECOND EDITION.

Itonbon a«b flftnk :

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1871.

[ The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved '.]

CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
DREAD STREET HILL.

CONTENTS.

fAGE

INTRODUCTION . ix

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST ...... I

{Front “ History of the Norman Conquest," by Edward A. Freeman, M.A.)

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, A. D. I066 . . 35

[From “ Lives of the Kings of England," by T. Roscoe, Esq.)

HEREWARD AND WALTHEOF, A. D. IO60 — lOfJ ....... 6l

{From Lingard’s “ History of England.")

FEUDALISM 80

{From “ History of England during the Early and Middle Ages," by
Charles H. Pearson, M.A.)

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST 85

{From “ History of Englatid during the Early and Middle Ages," by
Charles H. Pearson, M.A.)

LAN FRANC, A.D. IOO5 — 1089 98

[From “ Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," by W. F. Hook, D.D.)

THE DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, A. D. 1087 . . . . I30

{From “ The History of Normandy," by Sir F. Palgrave.)

THE NORMANS IN SICILY, A.D. IOO3— IO90 136

{From “ The Normans in Sicily," by H. Gally Knight, Esq. M.P.)

3\c\\'5

CONTENTS.

1'AGE

REG V VII. A.D. IO48—I086 • 153

1 From “ Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography ,” by the Right Hon. Sir
J. Stephen, K.C.B.)

ANSELM, A.D. IO33 — IIO9 203

(From “ Essays and Reviews," by the Rev. Richard Church.)

MALCOLM CAN MORE, A.D. 1080 — 1093 .... 246

{From “ History 0/ Nortnaiidy and, England,” by Sir F. Palgrave.)

THE CRUSADES 278

(From “ History 0/ Latin Christianity," by Dean Milman.)

THE 3IEDK OF JERUSALEM, A. D. IO99 301

From ** History 0 f the Life of Richard Cceur de Lion," by G. P. R. James.)

DI ATI! OF WILLIAM RUFUS, AND ACCESSION OF HENRY THE FIRST,

AD. IIOO 312

(Ft ■ f England and Normattdy? by Sir F. Palgrave.)

HENRY 1 OF NORMANDY, A. D. IIOI — 1 135 329

(Frotn Hume’s “ History of England.")

KEIC.N OF STEPHEN, A. I). I 1 35 — I 1 54 . 34I

(From Fabyan’s “ Chronicle .")

' SCOTI \M> AND rHE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD, A.D.

1,355

[From "Lives of the English Saints.")

PREFACE.

In making the following Historical Selections, the Compilers
have been influenced by the conviction of a need which has
probably often been felt by persons engaged in education.

It is easy to teach young children the outlines of History
from Abridgments and Catechisms ; but, when these have
been gone through, and it becomes desirable to give a more
enlarged view of the subject, in order to render it really
useful and interesting, a difficulty often arises as to the
choice of books.

Two courses are open : either to take a general and conse-
quently dry history of facts, such as Russel’s “ Modern Europe;”
or to choose some work treating of a particular period or
subject, such as Lord Macaulay’s and Mr. Froude’s Histories,
and Dean Milman’s “Latin Christianity.”

The former course is usually found to render the study
of history uninteresting. The latter (although the works
themselves are fascinating) is unsatisfactory, because it is not
sufficiently comprehensive.

Experience having proved that the difficulty existed, if
was thought that it might be remedied by continuous and
chronological selections, taken, as much as was practicable,
from the larger works, which it is next to impossible for young
people to read at school, and which many may never have
the time and opportunity to study in after life.

The style of these works, and the manner in which the
various subjects are treated, is so superior to that of ordinary
Abridgments, that the extracts can scarcely fail to be

PREFACE .

viii

interesting ; and it is hoped that when certain definite events
and distinct biographies are imprinted on the memory and
imagination, they will stand out as landmarks, round which
other less important incidents may be grouped, and thus a
clearer view of the course and purpose of historical events
may be given than could be obtained even from a connected
outline.

The volume now published is an attempt to carry out this
idea; and if it should prove successful, the Compilers hope
to be enabled to follow it up with others of a similar character,
bringing down European History to the present time.

It has not, indeed, always been possible to make choice
of authors of equal celebrity, since only a few have written
upon the subjects which it was necessary to introduce in order
to connect the leading incidents of European History with
those of England. But the selection has in all cases been
made with the desire of giving specimens of good English
composition, as well as the most complete and interesting
accounts of the events narrated.

The sincere thanks of the Compilers are due to Dean Milrnan,
Dean Hook, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Pearson, Mr. Church, and the
owners of the copyright of the other works from which
selections have been taken, for the courteous readiness with
which they have allowed the extracts to be made. To Lady
Stephen especially they beg to express their gratitude, with
an apology for the copious use they have made of Sir James
Stephen’s beautiful Essay on Gregory VII.

June 29 thf 1868.

INTRODUCTION

The History of England properly commences at a much
earlier date than the Norman Conquest, but this period has been
selected for the direct commencement of the following sketches
as being marked by an infusion of vigour into the nation more
important than has ever since been effected.

England had been England, or the land of the Angles, for
five hundred years previous ; ever since, indeed, it received its
share of the great Teutonic flood which submerged the Roman
power in Western Europe. Lombards in Italy, Goths in Spain,
Franks in Gaul, Burgundians from the Alps to the Netherlands,
all wron the victory in the same century as that in which the
Angles and Saxons (whether these names represent two tribes
or are two titles for the same race) were mastering South”
eastern Britain. The fate of Continental Europe and Britain
would appear therefore, at first sight, precisely similar, since
both had received an original Celtic population, subdued and
taught by the Romans, more or less converted by Christian
teachers, and then overwhelmed by the Teutonic invaders.

But the resemblance is chiefly on the surface. In Italy, Spain,
Gaul, and Burgundy, Latin grandeur, art, and cultivation were
sufficiently strong to leave a lasting impress upon the Teutonic
conquerors. Roman civilization was not in these lands de-
stroyed by the barbarians ; on the contrary, it so overawed

IN TR OD UC TION.

and influenced them as by imperceptible degrees to in-
troduce a new element of refinement into their character,
moulding and almost transforming it.

fluence of the Romans upon the Britons was much
ill. Their grasp had been more quickly relin-
d the traces of social advancement which lingered
behind them seem to have produced no effect on the sturdy
English nation, except perhaps in the northern part of the
Island. The English language alone, so entirely Teutonic in
- n ' )\vs how little our ancestors derived from
Rome, especially when we place it in contrast with French,
which is almost as entirely Latin both in structure and in
derivation.

The Church however forms, to a certain extent, an exception
to this statement, since it owed its systematic establishment in
England more directly to missionaries from the Pope than did
any other sister branch in the West. The various churches of
the Continent which existed under the Roman Emperors with-
stood the torrent of heathenism that poured down upon them,
but the Christianity of Britain was almost entirely swept away
by the Saxon invasion ; and though able to hold its ground in
Wales, it required to be, as it were, started afresh by a new
mission before it could again become the religion of the
Island.

Thus it was that the Anglo-Saxons, or, as they are more pro-
perly called, the English, unprovided with native Celto-Roman
instructors, and even after their conversion only occasionally
receiving ecclesiastical assistance from Rome, were left for a
tirhe to their own natural powers of progress. These would
probably have been insufficient to raise them high in the scale
()1 nations. Sturdy and resolute, with great natural capacity
md a deep sense of the poetical, but lacking energy and

INTRODUCTION,

enterprise, the English of that period had honesty, but not
honour ; strength, but not spirit ; pride, but not enthusiasm ;
intellect, but scarcely vigorous mental life ; while sloth and
sensuality hindered the exercise even of the powers which they
possessed. True-hearted but uncouth men, with great faculties,
unavailing because never roused : such they were, and such
in all human probability would they have remained but for
their enemies.

The first of these were the Danes, who depopulated the
northern counties, and then colonized them so completely as to
leave a permanent impress upon the land. They brought with
them much vigour, especially for naval enterprise, and the
miseries they inflicted tended, by the latent force which was in
consequence developed, to form the greatest heroes of the
old English race. Alfred, his son and grandsons, are a suf-
ficient proof of the wisdom and gallantry of which the nation
was capable. But after a few reigns, too short for the educa-
tion of the people, the character of the royal family degenerated,
and the improvements recently introduced were swamped by
the savage barbarism of the Danish invaders and settlers,
whilst the country was further demoralized by the infection of
their gross habit of intoxication. A further political result fol-
lowed from the settlement of the Danes in England. By the
accession of Canute — their truly great monarch— the whole
line of English succession, which derived its origin from
Egbert, was unsettled, and the permanent restoration of the
old native royal family became almost hopeless, whilst by a
singular train of circumstances the last monarch of the line,
Edward the Confessor, an exile from his childhood, contracted
a close intimacy with the kindred race who, in the ordering of
Providence, were ultimately to prove the leaven of vigour to
the inert mass of his countrymen.

INTRODUCTION1

xii

For it was tne Norman who was destined to imbue the
old English race with the energy and refinement which were
lacking in them.

The Northmen of Norway had always been a brighter,
nobler, more gallant race than their kinsmen the Danes, and
when a colony of them settled permanently in Neustria, or
Normandy, it was with the desire to assimilate themselves to
the civilization of France, and thus raise themselves in the
rank of nations. Their own perceptions and national instincts
must have been the chief agents in the work ; and it is re-
markable that they not only became themselves polished, but
infused fresh life into the languid Gauls and worn-out Franks,
so that French history becomes a living thing from the time
that the Normans form a part of it.

It was this nation, chivalrous yet astute, with northern
vigour yet with Gallic cultivation, that Edward the Confessor
loved, and through whom, even during the course of his own
reign, he strove to improve and raise his jealous, discontented
subjects. The attempt was most needful; for the English,
debased by the Danish conquest, had sunk very low : yet its
immediate effect was only to excite a bitter hatred of the
Normans, and a strong contempt for the King himself, though
on his death there was a great reaction, and the memory of his
piety and gentleness raised him to the honour of a saint.

Edward was not actually the last of his lineage, but his direct
heir, Edgar Atheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironside, was a
child, and almost a foreigner, and the Confessor thought him-
self at liberty to choose as his successor the keen and mighty
Norman, William, a claimant against whom there could be
little chance of successful opposition except from the national
dislike to a stranger. This feeling was no doubt very strong,
and it was shown in the movement of the patriotic party, who,

INTRODUCTION.

xiii

in defiance of William, rallied round the half-English, half-
Danish, Harold Godwinson. But the absence of hereditary-
right made Harold an object of distaste and jealousy to the
old English nobility, and he failed therefore to carry with him
a sufficient body of the nation to secure his throne against a
sudden and prompt attack from abroad. William made good his
pretensions in the decisive Battle of Hastings ; and from thence-
forth the country was not only the land of the Anglo-Saxons,
but of a race who, in process of time, became inseparably
blended with them, and who are supposed by many to have
made England what it is at the present day. How erroneous
this opinion is — what England was before the accession of
William, and how singularly unchanged it remained afterwards
—is set forth in the following pages in the accurate words of
Mr. Freeman’s “ Norman Conquest,” whilst a detailed account
of the battle of Hastings, and of the defeat and death of
Harold, has been given from Roscoe’s “ Lives of the Kings of
England.”

Upon Harold’s death England lay powerless for want of a
leader, and her prostration at first, and the subsequent isolated
attempts of different nobles to shake off the yoke of the
Conqueror, are told in detail in the extract selected from
Dr. Lingard’s 'history.

On the whole, however, William meant well and behaved
well towards the Saxons. When they were goaded into re-
bellion by his rapacious Normans, he visited indeed severely
the breach of their oaths of submission ; but on the whole,
though insurrection was put down with a stern hand, yet the
bulk of the nation prospered; and it must be remembered
that he was rigorously impartial, punishing with unbending
justice his half-brother Odo, and Roger de Montgomery, the
son of his friend, when they attempted to establish the French

x\v

INTRODUCTION.

feudal system in England. For William was a man of un-
flinching will and great uprightness. He intended always to be
just, but he carried this virtue too often to excess, and thus
became unmerciful. Unable for want of leisure to examine
carefully, he tried to amalgamate the discordant elements under
his rule by the pressure of his iron gauntlet ; but he found that,
although he could crush, he could not consolidate. Continental
feudalism was his one idea of unity in a nation ; and what this
feudalism was, how in a modified form it was introduced into
England, and what were the general results of the Conquest
upon the condition of the English people, will be shown by
extracts from Mr. Pearson’s “ Lectures on English History.”
The Church was another sore difficulty. The English clergy
had shared in the degradation of the people, and needed an
entire reformation, while the Normans, as usual, were adven-
turers in ecclesiastical as well as state matters. It was not to a
native but to an Italian archbishop, the great Lanfranc, that
William chiefly trusted the regulation of the English Church ;
and his biography, forming as it does so important a part of
the history of the period, is abridged from Dean Hook’s “ Lives
of the Archbishops of Canterbury.”

There was, in fact, a great crisis taking place in the Church
at large throughout the reign of William ; but as it did not
affect England in his time, his death, eloquently and forcibly
related b\ Sir Irancis Palgrave, has been made to precede the
history of the struggle. The final victory of the Papal See over
the temporal power was so much owing to the support of the
Norman sovereigns established in Sicily that it has been thought
desirable to give the history of their remarkable conquest,
taken from a book too little known, by Mr. Gaily Knight,
before proceeding to abridge Sir James Stephen’s masterly
essay on Pope Gregory VII., the originator of that great

INTRODUCTION.

scheme for subjecting the temporal to the spiritual power
throughout Europe, which was intended to exalt the dignity of
the Church, whilst at the same time it enabled her to control
wickedness in high places.

The battle was to be fought inch by inch. It began in
England with Lanfranc’s successor Anselm, whose biography,
containing the whole question of lay investiture, has been
abridged from the Rev. Richard Church’s Essays. The life of
Anselm overlaps the reign of William Rufus, a wild period
which hardly merits the name of a reign, and in which is given
the story of the exiled royal line of England, selected from Sir
Francis Palgrave’s “ History of Normandy.” The strictures
on Margaret Atheling’s endeavours to raise and improve the
Celts, and to bring Scotland into connexion with Rome, then
the centre of religious influence, are perhaps rather too severe,
for it must be remembered that isolation and distance had kept
the North in an almost barbarous condition, and the only hope
of improvement lay in exterior interests. It was at this period,
when the power of the Roman Church was struggling for the
mastery, that the crusading spirit awoke in Europe, and
strengthened in a wonderful manner the influence of the
Church. The general outline of the Crusades has been taken
from Dean Milman’s “ Latin Christianity,” whilst the details
of the capture of Jerusalem are depicted in an extract from
James’s “ Life of Richard the First.”

England’s direct share in that first Crusade was small. The
fierce ungodly King took no part in it, but remained at home,
profiting by the absence of the Crusaders to carry out more
completely and unscrupulously the crushing process begun by
his father. For the history of the forest laws, the New Forest,
and of the death of William Rufus, recourse has again been
had to the pages of Sir F. Palgrave.

XVI

INTRODUCTION.

There is little salient in Henry Beauclerc’s history. Part of
it is anticipated in the life of Anselm ; and though much was
done by him to soften enmities and consolidate the union of
Normans and Saxons, yet there is little that has caught the
imagination of writers, so that even for the wreck of the White
Ship it has been necessary to turn to the staple of evenly told
narrative found in Hume’s History.

In the storms that followed, the misery of the country is
portrayed with great effect by Fabyan’s old chronicle, and
the peaceful and flourishing condition of Scotland, described
by the good monk Aelred, together with the invasion of
England by David I., are given with so much detail in a small
and but slightly known series of Lives of English Saints, that
it has been thought that the Battle of the Standard could
nowhere else be so picturesquely narrated.

With the lull produced by the peace between Stephen and
Maude closes the first period. Should the present extracts
be found to answer the purpose of the Compilers, a second
series will be begun, dating from Henry the Second, the first
King of the House of Anjou.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

{From ‘ ‘ History of the Norman Conquest by Edward A. Freeman, M. A.)

The Norman Conquest is the great turning-point in the
history of the English nation. Since the first settlement of
the English in Britain, the introduction of Christianity is the
only event which can compare with it in importance. And
there is this wide difference between the two. The introduc-
tion of Christianity was an event which could hardly fail to
happen sooner or later ; in accepting the Gospel the English
only followed the same law which, sooner or later, affected all
the Teutonic nations. But the Norman Conquest is some-
thing which stands without a parallel in any other Teutonic
land. If that Conquest be only looked on in its true light,
it is impossible to exaggerate its importance. And yet there
is no event whose true nature has been more commonly and
more utterly mistaken. No event is less fitted to be taken,
as it too often has been taken, for the beginning of our
national history. For its whole importance is not the impor-
tance which belongs to a beginning, but the importance which
belongs to a turning-point. The Norman Conquest brought
with it a most extensive foreign infusion, which affected our
blood, our language, our laws, our arts : still it was only an
infusion ; the older and stronger elements still survived, and
in the long run they again made good their supremacy. So
far from being the beginning of our national history, the

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Norman Conquest was the temporary overthrow of our national
being. But it was only a temporary overthrow. To a super-
ficial observer, the English people might seem for a while
to be wiped out of the roll-call of the nations, or to exist only as
the bondmen of foreign rulers in their own land. But in a few
generations we led captive our conquerors ; England was Eng-
land once again ; and the descendants of the Norman invaders
were to be found among the truest of Englishmen. England
may be as justly proud of rearing such step-children as Simon
of Montfort and Edward the First, as of being the natural
mother of Alfred 1 and of Harold. In no part of history can
any event be truly understood without reference to the events
which went before it and which prepared the way for it. But
in no case is such reference more needful than in dealing with
an event like that with which we are now concerned. The
whole importance of the Norman Conquest consists in the
effect which it had on an existing nation, humbled indeed, but
neither wiped out nor utterly enslaved — in the changes which
it wrought on an existing constitution, which was by degrees
greatly modified, but which was never either wholly abolished
or wholly trampled under foot. William, king of the English,
claimed to reign as the lawful successor of the kings of the
English who reigned before him. He claimed to inherit their
rights, and he professed to govern according to their laws.
His position, therefore, and the whole nature of the great re-
volution which he wrought, is utterly unintelligible without a
full understanding of the state of things which he found exist-
ing. Even when one nation actually displaces another, some
knowledge of the condition of the displaced nation is neces-
sary to understand the position of the displacing nation. The
English Conquest of Britain cannot be thorouglily understood
without some knowledge of the earlier history of the Celt and
the Roman. But when there is no displacement of a nation,
when there is not even the utter overthrow' of a constitution,
when there are only changes, however many and important,
wrought in an existing system, a knowledge of the earlier state
of things is an absolutely essential part of any knowledge

1 Alfred. (Mr. Freeman always uses the original spelling of the names.)

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST

of the later. The Norman Conquest of England is simply
an insoluble puzzle without a clear notion of the condition
of England and the English people at the time when the
Conqueror and his followers first set foot upon our shores.

The Norman Conquest, again, is an event which stands
by itself in the History of Europe. ... It was something
less than such conquests as form the main object of his-
tory during the great wandering of the nations : it was some-
thing more than those political conquests which fill up too
large a space in the history of modern times. It was
much less than a national migration : it was much more
than a mere change of frontier or of dynasty. ... It did
not expel or transplant the English nation, or any part of it,
but it gradually deprived the leading men and families of
England of their lands and offices, and thrust them down into
a secondary position under alien intruders. It did not at once
sweep away the old laws and liberties of the land ; but it at
once changed the manner and spirit of their administration,
and it opened the way for endless later changes in the laws
themselves. It did not abolish the English language ; but it
brought in a new language by its side, which for a while sup-
planted it as the language of polite intercourse, and which did
not yield to the reviving elder tongue till it had affected it by
the largest infusion that the vocabulary of one European
tongue ever received from another. The most important of
the formal changes in legislation, in language, in the system
of government, and in the tenure of land, were no immediate
consequences of the Conquest, no mere innovations of the
reign of William. They were the developments of a later
age, when the Norman as well as the Englishman found him-
self under the yoke of a foreign master. The distinct changes
in law and government which we commonly attribute to
William the Norman belong, in truth, in by far the greatest
number of cases, to his great-grandson Henry the Angevin.
But the reign of William paved the way for the reign of
Henry : had not William’s military conquest gone before,
Henry could have found no opportunity for his administrative
revolution. And the immediate changes were, after all, great
and weighty, because they affected the practical condition of

13 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS \

the people far more than they affected its written laws and
institutions. When a nation is driven to receive a foreigner
as its King, when that foreign King divides the highest offices
and the greatest estates of the land among his foreign fol-
lowers, though such a change must be carefully distinguished
from changes in the written law, still the change is, for
the time, practically the greatest which a nation and its
leaders can undergo. . . .

The Norman invaders in the eleventh century found in
the Isle of Britain, as any modern invader would find now,
three nations, speaking three languages • and they found,
then as now, one of the three holding a distinct superiority
over the whole land. Then, as now, English, Welsh, and
Gaelic were the three distinct tongues of the three races of
the island ; then, as now, the dominant Teuton knew himself
by no name but that of Englishman, and was known to
his Celtic neighbour by no name but that of Saxon. The
boundaries of the two nations and of their languages were
already fixed nearly as they remain at present. The English
tongue has made some advances since the eleventh century, but
they are small compared with the advances which it had made
between the fifth century and the eleventh.

The main divisions of the country, the local names of the vast
mass of its towns and villages, were fixed when the Norman
came, and they have survived, with but little change, to our
own day. While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh
century is useless for modem purposes, and looks like the
picture of another region, a map of England proper in the
reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England
proper in the reign of William. The Norman found in the
land substantially the same English nation which still exists,
occupying substantially the same territory which it occupies at
present. He found it already exhibiting, in its laws, its
language, its national character, the most essential of the
features which it still retains. Into the English nation which
he thus found already formed, his own dynasty and his own
followers were gradually absorbed. The conquered did not
become Normans, but the conquerors did become Englishmen.
It was by a very different process that the English themselves

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 5

had made good their footing on the island in which the
Norman found them, and to which they had already, long
ago, given their name. . . .

The English conquest of Britain differed, in several im-
portant respects, from every other settlement of a Teutonic
people within the limits of the Roman Empire. Everywhere
else the invaders gradually adopted the language and the
religion of the conquered. If the conquerors were heathens
at the time of their settlement, they gradually adopted Chris-
tianity. If they had already adopted Christianity in its Arian
form, they gradually exchanged their heretical creed for that of
the Catholic Church. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders
gradually learned to speak some form, however corrupt, of the
language of Rome. The Teutonic conquerors of Italy, Spain,
and Gaul have indeed infused into the Romance languages of
these countries a large proportion of words of Teutonic origin ;
still the language of all those countries remains essentially Latin;
the Teutonic element in them is a mere infusion. Everywhere
but in Britain the invaders respected the laws and arts of
Rome. The Roman law was preserved side by side with the
Barbaric codes, as the rightful heritage of the conquered
people ; and, in the process of ages, the Roman law gradually
recovered its position as the dominant code of a large portion
of continental Europe. Everywhere but in Britain the local
divisions and local nomenclature survived the Conquest.
Nearly every Gaulish tribe recorded by Caesar has left its
name still to be traced on the modern map. In Britain every-
thing is different. The conquering English entered Britain
as heathens, and after their settlement in Britain they still
retained the heathen worship of their fathers. They were at
last converted to Christianity, but it was not by the Christians
whom they found in the island, but by a special mission from
the common ecclesiastical centre. . . . And as the English in
Britain retained their religion, so they also retained their
language, and retained it far more permanently. A few Celtic,
and a still fewer Latin,1 words found their way into English

1 Such as Street, Chester, and the like, but this class is excessively rare.
See Max Midler, Science of Language, Second Series, p. 264.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

from the first days of the Conquest, and a somewhat larger
stock of Latin ecclesiastical 1 terms was naturally brought in by
the Christian missionaries. But, with these two very small
classes of exceptions, the English language retained its purely
Low-Dutch character down to that great infusion * of Romance
words into our vocabulary which was a result, though not an
immediate result, of the Norman Conquest. And, to this
day, though the Romance infusion divides the vocabulary of
our dictionaries with our national Teutonic speech, it still
remains only an infusion — an infusion greater in degree, but
essentially the same in kind, as the Teutonic infusion into
the Romance languages. As it is impossible to put together
the shortest French sentence without the use of Romance
'words, so it is impossible to put together the shortest English
sentence without the use of Teutonic words. But it is possible
to compose sentence after sentence of French without a single
Teutonic word, and it is equally possible to compose sentence
after sentence of English without a single Romance word.

In Britain, too, the arts of Rome perished as utterly as
the language and the religion of Rome ; arts, language, and
religion were all brought back again at a later period and
in a corrupted form. The laws of Rome perished utterly ;
they exercised no influence upon our insular jurisprudence,
until, in times after the Norman Conquest, the Civil Law was
introduced as something utterly exotic. And even then our
insular jurisprudence was too strong for it ; the Imperial legis-
lation never gained that supremacy which it gained in most
parts of the Continent, and even in the Scottish portion of
our island. In England, again, the local nomenclature is
throughout essentially Teutonic. A few great cities and a few
great natural objects, London on the Thames and Gloucester
on the Severn, still retain names older than the English Con-
quest, but the great mass of the towns and villages of England
bear names which were given them either by the Angles and
Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries or by the Danes of the
ninth and tenth. In short, though the utter extirpation of a

1 Such as mass, bishop, priest, deacon, abbot, angel, candle ; (all of which,
however, except the first and last, only came through Latin from Greek),

— C. M. Y.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST

nation is an impossibility, there is every reason to believe that
the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had
become English at the end of the sixth century had been as
nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would doubt-
less be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is concerned,
we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery
were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the
hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic element
in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly every
Welsh word which has found its way into English expresses
some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves would
be concerned with ; nearly all the words belonging to the
nobler occupations, all the terms of government and war, and
nearly all the terms of agriculture, are thoroughly Teutonic. . . .

Our forefathers appeared in the isle of Britain purely as de-
stroyers ; nowhere else in Western Europe were the existing men
and the existing institutions so entirely swept away. The Eng-
lish wiped out everything Celtic and everything Roman as
thoroughly as everything Roman was wiped out of Africa by the
Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow never fell
on any nation than the landing of the Angles and Saxons was
to the Celt of Britain. But we may now be thankful for the
barbarism and ferocity of our forefathers. Had we stayed in
our earlier land we should have remained undistinguished from
the mass of our Low-Dutch kinsfolk. Had we conquered and
settled only as Gauls and Burgundians conquered and settled,
we should be simply one more member of the great family of
the Romance nations. Had we been a colony sent forth after
the mother country had attained to any degree of civilization,
we might have been lost like the Normans in Sicily or the
Franks in Palestine. As it was, we were a colony sent forth
while our race was still in a state of healthy barbarism. We
won a country for ourselves, and grew up, a new people in a
new land, bringing with us ideas and principles common to us
with the rest of our race, but not bringing with us any of the
theories and prejudices which have been the bane of later
colonization. Severed from the old stock, and kept aloof
from intermixture with any other, we ceased to be Germans
and we did not become Britons or Romans. In our new

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

country we developed our system for ourselves, partly by
purely native growth, partly by independent intercourse with
the common centre of civilization. The Goth is merged in
the Romance population of Italy, Spain, and Acquitaine ; the
Old-Saxon has lost his national being through the subtler prosely-
tism of the High German ; but the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes,
transplanted to the shores of Britain, have won for themselves
a new name and a new national being, and have handed on
to us the distinct and glorious inheritance of Englishmen.

Thus, before the end of the sixth century, by far the greater
and more fertile portion of Britain had become heathen and
Teutonic. . . . Three kindred tribes, "Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes, are, in the common national tradition, said to have
divided the land among them in very unequal proportions.
To trace out by the evidence of local nomenclature, or
otherwise, the exact extent of their settlements, is highly
curious and interesting as a matter of antiquarian and philo-
sophical research. But the results of such inquiries are of
little importance for the purpose of such a sketch as the
present. Long before the Norman Conquest, the various
Low-Dutch tribes in Britain had been fused into the one
English nation. The distinction between Angle and Saxon
had become merely provincial. To the united nation, the
Angle had given his name, the Saxon had given his royal
dynasty; the Jute, the least considerable in the extent of his
territorial possessions, had been, according to all tradition,
the first to lead the way to a permanent settlement, and he
had undoubtedly been honoured by supplying the ecclesias-
tical centre from which Christianity was spread over the
land. If Wessex boasted of the royal capital of Winchester,
Kent boasted no less proudly of the spiritual metropolis of
Canterbury.

The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of
seven kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a
single over-lord (or Bretwalda), is a dream which has passed away
before the light of historic criticism. The English kingdoms in
Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their
relations to one another. ... Yet it is certain that, among the
mass of smaller and more obscure principalities, seven King-

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 9

doms do stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of A-°-
which it is possible to recover something like a continuous
history, seven Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for
the dominion of the whole island. First comes the earliest
permanent Teutonic settlement in Britain, the Jutish kingdom
of Kent. The direct descendants of Hengest reigned over 449
a land which, as the nearest portion of Britain to the con-
tinent, has ever been the first to receive every foreign im-
migration, but which, notwithstanding, prides itself to this day
on its specially Teutonic character, and on the retention of
various old Teutonic usages which have vanished elsewhere.
Besides Kent, the Yutes formed no other strictly independent
State. Their only other settlement was a small principality,
including the Isle of Wight and part of Hampshire, whose 530
history is closely connected with that of the great Saxon
kingdom in its immediate neighbourhood, in which it was
at last merged. The remainder of the English territory south
of the Thames, together with a small portion to the north of
that river, formed the three kingdoms of the Saxons, the
East, the South, and the West, whose names speak for them-
selves. Among these, Sussex and Essex fill only a secondary
part in our history. . . . Very different was the destiny of the 5 1 <,
third Saxon kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, Eng-
land into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the
British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before
and since the eleventh century, has had the blood of Cerdic,
the West Saxon, in his veins. At the close of the sixth century,
Wessex had risen to high importance among the English king-
doms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were still
far distant. Step by step, from a small settlement on the
Hampshire coast, the West Saxons had won their way, fighting
battle after battle against the Welsh, and after nearly every battle
extending their borders by a new acquisition of territory. . , .

The Somersetshire Axe, and the forests on the borders of
Somersetshire and Wiltshire, separated the kingdom from
the independent Britons to the west. North of the Thames
lay the three great kingdoms of the Angles. One of these,
probably the most purely Teutonic realm in Britain, occupied
the great peninsula, or rather island, between the fens and the

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS,

A D- German Ocean, which received from them the name of East
Anglia. Far to the north, from the Humber to the Forth,
571 lay the great realm of the Northumbrians, sometimes united
547 under a single prince, sometimes divided by the Tyne and

the Tees into the two kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira

Meanwhile, in the middle of Britain, a power equal to any

of the others was growing up The kingdom of the

Mercians, the March or border land against the Welsh, ap-
584 pears at the end of the sixth century as a powerful state ; but
it has no distinctly recorded founder, no distinctly recorded
date of origin. It seems to have grown up from the joining
together of a great number of small principalities, probably
of much more varied origin than the different portions of the
other kingdoms. The prevailing blood was Anglian, but it is
certain that the Mercian kingdom was considerably enlarged by
conquest at the expense of the Saxon race. . . .

Such were the territorial divisions of Teutonic Britain at
the end of the sixth century, . . . the last years of which
were marked by a change hardly less important than the
first settlement of the Teutonic tribes in Britain. The
Christian faith, which the English had despised or passed by
unheeded as the creed of the conquered Welsh, was now set
before them by a special mission from the city which still
commanded the reverence of all Western Europe. Kent,
under its King FEthelberht,1 who then held the rank of
579 Bretwalda, became the first Christian kingdom, and Canterbury
became the first Christian city, the spiritual metropolis, of the
English nation. ... In less than a century, all the English
Kingdoms had fully accepted Christianity. . . . Bishoprics
were gradually founded, the limits of each diocese commonly
answering to those of a Kingdom or principality. The supremacy
of Kent at the beginning of the conversion, the supremacy
of Northumberland at the stage when Christianity was first
preached to the Northern English, is still shown to this day
in the metropolitan position of Canterbury, the city of the
Bretwalda FEthelberht, and of York, the city of the Bretwalda
Eadwine.2 . . .

1 Ethelbert

2 Fdwin.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST \

The conversion of the English to Christianity at once altered
their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had
been almost wholly insular ; our heathen forefathers had had
but little to do, either in war or peace, with any nations beyond
their own four seas. We hear little of any connexion being
kept up between the Angles and Saxons who settled in Britain,
and their kinsfolk who abode in their original country. The
little intercourse that we read of seems to be wholly with the
Franks who now bore rule on the opposite coast of Gaul. . . .
By its conversion England was first brought, not only within the
pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general
political society of Europe. But our insular position, com-
bined with the events of our earlier history, was not without
its effect on the peculiar character of Christianity as estab-
lished in England. England was the first great territorial con-
quest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of the Roman
Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civiliza-
tion. ... In England, alone in the West, a purely national
Church arose. One great error indeed was committed ; the
vernacular tongue did not become the language of public
worship. The mistake was natural. It had occurred to no
man to translate the Latin services, drawn up at a time when
Latin was the universal language of the West, into those pro-
vincial dialects, the parents of the future Romance tongues,
which might already be growing up in Gaul and Spain. We
should as soon think of translating the Prayer-book into the
dialects of Somersetshire or Yorkshire. Led thus to look on
Latin as the one tongue of worship, as well as of literature
and government, Augustine and his successors failed to remark
that Teutonic England stood in a wholly different position
from Romanized Gaul and Spain. They failed to remark that
the same reasons which required that men should pray in Latin
at Rome required that they should pray in English at Canter-
bury. The error was pardonable, but in its effects it was great.
Still, though England had not vernacular services, she soon
began to form a vernacular literature, sacred and profane,
poetical and historical, to which no other nation of the West
can supply a parallel. The English Church, reverencing Rome,
but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

national character, and gradually infused its influence into all
the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of
the seventh century the independent, insular, Teutonic Church
had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian
firmament.

From this time the amount of intercourse with other nations
steadily increased, and the change of religion had also a most
important effect within the island itself. The morality of the
Gospel had a distinct influence upon the politics of the age.
The Evangelical precepts of peace and love did not put an
end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquest,
but they distinctly humanized the way in which war was carried
on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the
Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen Eng-
lish had been satisfied with nothing short of the destruction
or expulsion of their enemies : the Christian English thought
it enough to reduce them to political subjection. This is
clearly marked in the advance of Wessex towards the west.
Twenty years before the coming of Augustine, Ceawlin, the
West-Saxon Bretwalda, had . . . taken the cities of Bath, Glou-
cester, and Cirencester. . . . The land between the Avon and
the Axe, the northern part of modern Somersetshire, became
a permanent portion of the West-Saxon realm. This was the
last heathen conquest, the last exterminating conquest waged
by the West Saxons against the Britons. During a space of
three hundred years, the process of West-Saxon conquest still
went on ; . . , step by step the old Cornish kingdom shrank
up before the conquerors, till at last no portion of land south
of the Bristol Channel was subject to a British sovereign. This
was conquest, and, no doubt, fearful and desolating conquest,
but it was no longer conquest which offered the dreadful alter-
natives of death, banishment, or personal slavery. The Chris-
tian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the Christian
Saxon. The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a
citizen ; he was put under the protection of the law ; he could
hold landed property ; his blood had its price, and his oath
had its ascertained value. The value set on his 'life and on
his oath shows that he was not yet looked on as the equal of
the conquering race ; but the Welshman within the West-Saxon

ENGLAND BEFORE TEE CONQUEST.

border was no longer a wild beast, an enemy, or a slave, but
a fellow-Christian living under the king’s peace. There can be
no doubt that the great peninsula stretching from the Axe to
the Land’s End was, and still is, largely inhabited by men who
are only naturalized Englishmen, descendants of the Welsh
inhabitants, who gradually lost their distinctive language, and
became merged in the general mass of their conquerors. In
fact, the extinction of the Cornish language in modern Corn-
wall within comparatively recent times was only the last stage
of a process which began with the conquests of Cenwealh1 in
the seventh century. . . .

During the seventh and eighth centuries there were many
fluctuations in the relative position of the English kingdoms.

. . . Wessex2 stood high, but its kings, occupied with extending
their western frontier, made as yet no attempt to acquire the
supremacy of the whole island, and they often had no small
difficulty in maintaining their own independence against North-
umbrians and Mercians. The rivalries of these last two
powers fill for a long while the most important place in our
history. At the end of the sixth century and the beginning of
the seventh, Northumberland was at the height of its power.

. . . In the latter half of the eighth century Offa raised the
Mercian kingdom to a greater degree of real power than it
had ever before held. * . . Victorious over all enemies within
his own island, he, as the mightiest potentate of the West,
corresponded on equal terms with the great Charles, the
mightiest potentate of the East. . . . After his death the great-
ness of Mercia continued for a while undiminished under the
reign of his son Cenwulf. But meanwhile the seeds of a
mighty revolution were being sown. A prince, taught in the
school of adversity, who had learned the arts of war and
statecraft at the feet of the hero of the age, was, in the sixth
year after Offa’s death, raised to the throne of the West Saxons,
He was destined to achieve a dominion for which that narrow
and local description seemed all too mean. Once, and seem-

1 Cenwealh. commonly written Cenowalch, was King of the West Saxons
from 643 to 672, and pushed his frontier further to the west. — C. M. Y.

2 Wessex was the kingdom of the West Saxons, including Hampshire,
Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and part of Devonshire.
— C. M. Y.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

ingly once only, in the hour of victory, did the eighth
Bretwalda, the founder of the permanent supremacy of
Wessex, venture to exchange his ancestral title of King of
a. d. the West Saxons for the prouder style of King of the English.
823 Ecgberht1 was chosen king of the West Saxons in the
same year, a.d. 823, in which Charles the Great was chosen
Emperor. And we can hardly doubt that the example of his
illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes.
He could not aspire indeed, like Charles, to the diadem of the
Caesars, but he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island
which men sometimes counted for a separate world. He
could win for his own kingdom a permanent superiority over
all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day when all
England and all Britain should acknowledge only a single king.
The eighth Bretwalda not only established over the whole land
a power such as had been held by no other prince before him,
but he did what no other Bretwalda had ever done, he handed
on his external dominion as a lasting possession to his suc-
cessors in his own kingdom. From this time forward, Wessex
remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The
power of the West-Saxon kings might be assaulted, and at
last overthrown, by foreign invaders, but it was never again
disputed by rival potentates of English blood. In short, as
Charles founded the kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht at least
laid the foundations of the kingdom of England. In his reign
of thirty-six years he reduced all the English kingdoms to a
greater or less degree of subjection. . . . But while thus oc-
cupied he had also to carry on the usual warfare with his
Celtic neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was
now utterly broken. The long struggle which had gone on
ever since the days of Cerdic was now over ; the English
frontier seems to have been extended to the Tamar, and the
English supremacy was certainly extended to the Land’s End.
The Welsh, however, within the conquered territory still re-
tained their distinct existence, and they sometimes, with the
aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against
the North Welsh — that is, the inhabitants of Wales proper —

1 Egbert.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 15

Ecgberht was successful. . . . But his power seems not to have
extended over the Piets, the Scots, or the Strathclyde Welsh. . . .
When at the height of his power, he was not, therefore, Lord
of the whole Isle of Britain. To win that title was the work
of the West-Saxon conquerors of the next century.

But, just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching this
pitch of greatness, it was threatened by an enemy far more 787
formidable than any that could be found within the four seas
of Britain. . . . The northern part of Europe, peopled by a
race closely akin to the Low-Dutch, and speaking another
dialect of the common Teutonic speech, now began to send
forth swarms of pirates over all the seas of Europe, who from
pirates often grew into conquerors. They were still heathens,
and their incursions, both in Britain and on the continent,
must have been a scourge almost as frightful as the settlement
of the English had been to the original Britons. ... As the
Saxons and Angles plundered and desolated long before they
actually settled, so now their northern kinsmen followed the
same course. . . .

The reigns of the son and the grandson of Ecgberht were
almost wholly taken up by the struggle with the Northmen.

In the reign of ^Ethelwulf,1 the son of Ecgberht, it is recorded
that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the Isle of 855
Sheppey. . . . Hithereto they had plundered, and had gone
away wfith their plunder ; to spend the winter on English
ground was the first step towards a permanent settlement. It
was not, however, till about ten years from this time that the 864
settlement actually began. Meanwhile, the sceptre of the
West Saxons passed from one hand to another. It ia remarkable
that no English king of this or of the following century seems
- to have reached old age. After ^Ethelwulf, whose age is
uncertain, only one or two of his descendants for several
generations reached the age of fifty, and the greater part of
them were cut off while they were quite young. Four sons of 858
^Ethelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first
three among them make up together only thirteen years. In
the reign of the third of these princes, ^Ethelred2 the First, ... 866

1 Ethelwolf.

4 Ethelred.

HISTORICAL s£LECTlHvA,

a. n. the full storm of invasion burst upon Wessex itself. King
’ AEthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero-kings, sup-
ported by his greater brother Hdfred, met the invaders in battle
871 after battle with varied success. He died, and HClfred suc-
ceeded in the thick of the struggle. ... For a few years
Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incur-
sions, but Northumberland and part of Mercia were systemati-
876 cally occupied by the Northmen, and the land was divided
among them. ... At last, the Northmen, now settled in a large
part of the island, made a second attempt to add Wessex
878 itself to their possessions. For a moment the land seemed
conquered ; Alfred himself lay hid in the marshes of Somerset-
shire men might well deem that the empire of Ecgberht, and
the kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the
strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the
scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried his people safely
through this most terrible of dangers. Within the same year
the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious, and the Northmen
were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen fifty years
sooner would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation,
but which now might fairly be looked upon as honourable, and
even as triumphant. By the terms of the peace of Wedmore
880 the Northmen were to evacuate Wessex, and the part of
Mercia south-west of Watling Street ; they, or at least their
chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the
whole land beyond Watling Street as vassals of the West-Saxon
king. Guthrum, the Danish king, was accordingly baptized
by the name of ^Ethelstan ; he took possession of his new domi-
nions, and preserved the peace with decent fidelity till his
death.

A large part of England thus received a colony of Danish
inhabitants. They gave . their name to their conquest, and
England is for the future divided into Wessex, Mercia, and
Denalcign, the region where the Danish law was in force. This
Danish occupation was a real settlement of a new people in
the land. . . . How extensive it was is best seen in the local
nomenclature. . . . The names of the towns and villages
throughout a large part of the ceded territory, show the syste-
matic way in which the land was divided among the Danish

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

leaders. Through a large region, stretching from Warwickshire
to Cumberland, but most conspicuously in Yorkshire, Lincoln-
shire, and Leicestershire, the Danish termination by marks the
settlements of the invaders ; and, in a vast number of cases,
the name of the manor still retains the name of the Danish
lord to whom it was assigned in the occupation of the ninth
century. Names like Carlby, Haconby, Kettilby, Thorkillby,
tell their own story. In two cases at least, the Danes gave
new names to considerable towns : Streoneshath and North-
weorthig, exchanged their names for the new ones of Whitby
and Derby (Deoraby). This last town is one of considerable
importance in the history of the Danish settlement. It formed,
along with Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham, and Stamford, a
member of a sort of confederation of Danish towns which,
under the name of the Five Boroughs, often plays a part in
the events of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Alfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the
most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of
a prince, who has become a hero of romance, who, as such,
has had countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to
whose character romance has done no more than justice, and
who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable.

No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all
the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no
other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by
so little alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without
ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence
of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained
by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted
up to insolence in the day of triumph, there is no other
name in history to compare with his. . . .

And he was specially happy in handing on a large share of
his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The
West-Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most A D
brilliant royal lines on record. . . . AElfred’s successor, Eadward 901
the Elder, completed the work which Ecgberht had begun, by
first extending the supremacy of Wessex over the whole island
of Britain. Under his sons, ^Ethelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, 925
that supremacy was maintained and consolidated at the point

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

of the sword His grandson, Eadgar the Peaceful, enjoyed the

95° fruit of their labours, and further strengthened their work by
a reign of strong and orderly government, of constant readiness
for warfare during a time, for those days, of unparalleled quiet.

800 Thus, from Ecgberht to Eadgar, a hundred and seventy years
built up the kingdom of England — a kingdom which, as coming
events showed, could still be conquered, but which could no
longer be permanently divided. . . .

With the consolidation of their Teutonic kingdom, the same
West-Saxon princes obtained a more extended and more pre-
carious empire over their Celtic neighbours. The later fate of
its various portions has been widely different In Cumber-
land no sign is left, and in Cornwall not many, that the
dominion of the English king was once that of an external
over-lord, and not that of an immediate sovereign. On Wales
the English dominion has been pressed closer and closer till
all political and civil distinctions between Wales and England
have been wiped out, though the ancient language, and with it
a distinct provincial feeling, still remains. Scotland, after
various fluctuations, at last won complete independence of
the English over-lord, and was finally united with England on
equal terms as an independent kingdom. Strange to say, the
little realm of Maccus (Man) is the only part of the empire
of Eadgar which is not now thoroughly fused into the general
mass of the United Kingdom.

But different as has been the later fate of the different portions
of the dominions of Eadgar, his Teutonic kingdom and his
Celtic empire both passed nearly untouched into the hands of
the Norman Conqueror. . . . What the Constitution was under
Eadgar, that it remained under William. This assertion must
be taken with all the practical drawbacks which are involved in
the forcible transfer of the Crown to a foreign dynasty, and in
the division of the greater part of the lands of the Kingdom
among the followers of the foreign King. But the Constitution
remained the same ; the laws, with a few changes in detail,
remained the same ; the language of public documents remained
the same. The powers which were vested in King William
and his Witan remained constitutionally the same as those
which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

hundred years before. The change in the social condition of
the country, the change in the spirit of the national and local
administration, the change in the relation of the kingdom to
foreign lands, were changes as great as words can express. The
practical effect of these changes was a vast increase of the royal
power and the introduction of wholly new relations between
the king and every class of his subjects. But formal consti-
tutional change there was none. . . . The English Kingship
gradually changed from a Kingship of the old Teutonic type to
a Kingship of the later mediaeval type. The change began
before the Norman Conquest ; it was hastened by the Norman
Conquest ; but it was not completed till long after the Norman
Conquest. Such a change was not, and could not be, the work
of one man, or of one generation. But so far as it can be said
to be the work of one man, so far as there was one man who
put the finishing stroke to the work, one man who gathered
up detached and incoherent elements into one consistent
system, that man was not William of Normandy, but Henry
of Anjou.

What, then, was the nature, and what was the origin of that
Kingship, which the election — the constrained and unwilling
election — of the Witan of all England did, on Midwinter day,
eight hundred years back, entrust to William, duke of Nor-
mandy— from that day forward William, King of the English?
. . . In the days of Tacitus, some of the Teutonic tribes had
Kings and others had not ; in the time of Csesar, it would seem
that Kingships were the exception, and not the rule. The
chieftains of the first settlers in our own island seem to
have borne no higher title than that of Ealdorman or Heretoga.
These two names seem to express two different aspects of the
same office. The same person is Ealdorman as a civil ruler,
and Heretoga as a military chieftain. The former name survives
in our language, but with sadly diminished dignity ; the title
which once expressed a rank which among worldly dignitaries
was inferior to Kingship alone, has taken refuge with a class of
municipal magistrates, extending themselves downwards to the
pettiest boroughs. The other name, always much more rarely
in use, has dropped altogether out of our tongue. ... It is not
perfectly clear in what the authority or dignity of the king

C 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

exceeded that of the Ealdorman ; but it is clear that the title of
King did carry with it an advance in both respects. Most
probably, even the smallest Kingdom was formed by the union
of the districts of several Ealdormen. ... It is certain that
Kingship required descent from the Gods ; it may be that no
such divine origin was needed by the mere Ealdorman. . . .
During the whole period commonly called that of the Hep-
tarchy, the whole land was full of petty princes, some of whom
undoubtedly bore the title of King, though others may have
reigned simply as Ealdormen. . . . But, at least from the time of
Ecgberht onwards, there is a marked distinction between the
King and the Ealdorman . . . The King is supreme, the Ealdor-
man is simply sent by him. . . . He is a Viceroy appointed
by the King and his Witan ; he is liable to be removed by
them, and he is responsible to them for the exercise of his
authority. . . . So, when Northumberland was finally incorpo-
rated with England under Eadred, Kingship was abolished, and
the government was entrusted to a magistrate with the title of
Ealdorman, or its Danish equivalent, Eorl. By the exactly
contrary process, Princes of the empire, Dukes — that is,
Ealdormen or Heretogan — and not only Dukes, but Counts,
Margraves, Landgraves, all of them originally mere magistrates
under the Emperor-King, have gradually grown into sovereign
princes, and have at last, in several cases, ventured to assume
the kingly title.

The mere title of King seems to me to be comparatively
recent among the Teutonic nations. It does not occur in the
earliest Teutonic monument, the Gothic Gospels ; but in our
own language it seems to be as old as the English settle-
ments in Britain. . . . Cyning by contraction King, is evidently
closely connected with the word Cyn or Kin. . . And the
connexion is not without an important meaning. The King is
the representative of the race, the embodiment of its national
being, the child of his people, and not their father. A King, in
the old Teutonic sense, is not the King of a country, but the
King of a nation. Such titles as King of England, or King of
France, are comparatively modern, and the idea which they
express is equally so. ... The idea of the King of a country
would have been hardly intelligible to our forefathers. Every

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST

King is King of a people. He is King of Goths, Franks,
Saxons, wherever Goths, Franks, Saxons may happen to settle.
The Goths and their Kings moved from the Danube to the
Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Tagus ; but Alaric and Ataulf
were equally Kings of the Goths, in whatever quarter of the
world the Goths might be. . . . So when the West-Saxon king
had swallowed up all his brethren, he became not King of
England, but King of the English. . . .

The King’s power and dignity gradually grew. They grew
by the mere extension of his dominions. The larger a prince’s
territory becomes, the greater is the distance at which he finds
himself from the mass of his subjects. He becomes more and
more clothed with a sort of mysterious dignity ; he comes
more and more to be looked upon as something different from
ordinary men, even from ordinary civil magistrates and military
leaders. . . . Through this cause only, every fresh addition of
territory added fresh power and dignity to the kings of the
house of Cerdic in their progress from the Ealdormanship of
a corner of Hampshire to the imperial crown of the Isle of
Britain. But this cause was by no means the only one. The
growth of the royal power was greatly helped by another cause,
fully to understand which we must go back to the very earliest
accounts which we have of the political institutions of the
Teutonic race.

From the very beginning of our history twro opposing elements
may be discerned, one of which in the end gained the com-
plete mastery over the other. The one is the original self-
governing Teutonic community ; the other is the King or other
Lord, with his personal following.

In the very earliest glimpses of Teutonic political life, we
find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements
already clearly marked. There are leaders, with or without the
royal title ; there are men of noble birth, whose noble birth,
in whatever the original nobility may have consisted, entitles
them to pre-eminence in every way ; but beyond these there is
a free and armed people, in whom it is clear that the ultimate
sovereignty resides. Small matters are decided by the chiefs
alone, great matters are submitted by the chiefs to the assem-
bled nation Of the nature and functions of such an

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

assembly I shall have presently to speak, when I trace out the
origin and nature of the Old-English Witenagemot. My pre-
sent point is the distinction of orders in the state. Tacitus sets
before us a marked distinction between the noble and the com-
mon freeman, that is, in Old-English phrase, between the
Eorl and the Ceorl. The modern English forms of these words
have completely changed their meaning. The word Earl , after
several fluctuations, has settled down as the title of one rank
in the peerage ; the word Churl has come to denote a certain
form of moral obliquity, irrespective of the rank of the person
who is guilty of the offence. But, in the primary meaning of
the words, Eorl and Ceorl — words whose happy jingle causes
them constantly to be opposed to each other — form an exhaus-
tive division of the free members of the State. The distinc-
tion in modern language is most nearly expressed by the words
gentle and simple. The Ceorl is the simple freeman, the mere
unit in the army or in the assembly, whom no distinction of
birth or office marks out from his fellows. It must not be for-
gotten that among the ancient English, as among all other
Teutonic nations, the system of slavery was in full force. The
Ceorl, therefore, like the ancient Greek citizen, though he
might be looked down upon by an aristocratic class, was
actually a privileged person as compared with a large number
of human beings in his own city or district. . . . The Eorl and
the Ceorl, in fact, answer pretty much to the esquire and the
yeoman ; the modern artificial peerage is something quite
different, and we shall presently perhaps see its beginnings.
The primitive Teutonic community is thus set before us as one
of Eorls and Ceorls, headed by a King, Ealdorman, or other
leader, temporary or permanent, elective or hereditary. Such
a community occupies its own territory, its Mark , which terri-
tory consists of land of two kinds. There is the common
land, either applied to the general use of the community, or
else held by individuals on such terms as the community, in
its character of landowner, may think fit to allow. There are
also the particular possessions of individuals, portions assigned
to them by common consent, which are the absolute property
of their owners, held of no superior, but simply subject to such
burthens as the community in its political character may think

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

good to impose on its members. . . . Such an allotment in
absolute property, held of no superior, subject to nothing but
the laws of the State, is called in different Teutonic dialects
eotel, odal , or alod. It is an estate, great or small, which the
owner does not hold either of the King or of any other Lord,
but in regard to which he knows no superior but God and
the law.

The communities of freemen, among whom some had a pre-
eminence in rank, and doubtless in wealth, but among whom
every freeman was a member of the State, form one of the
elements of Teutonic life as we see it in its very earliest
pictures. But those same pictures set no less strongly before
us another element which grew up alongside of the primitive
democracy, and which was destined in the long run to supplant
it more or less completely in nearly every Teutonic country. . . .
Every Teutonic King or other leader was surrounded by a band
of chosen warriors, personally attached to him of their own free
choice. The chief and his followers were bound together by
the strongest ties of mutual trust, and a lack of faithfulness
on either side was reckoned among the most shameful of
crimes. The followers served their chief in peace and in
war ; they fought for him to the death, and rescued or avenged
his life with their own. In return, they shared whatever gifts
or honours the chief could distribute among them ; and, in
our tongue at least, it was his character of dispenser of gifts
which gave the chief his official title. He was the Hlaford,
the Loaf-giver; a name,' which through a series of softenings and
contractions and with a complete forgetfulness of its primitive
meaning, has settled down into the modern form of lord. His
followers were originally his Companions. . . . The companion
became the Thegn , Thane , or Servant. . . . Purely menial ser-
vices, when rendered to persons of exalted rank, were held,
not only not to degrade the freeman, but to confer positive
honour on all who were, if only by one degree, less exalted. . . .
The king’s dish-thegn , his bower-thegn , his horse-thegn or staller ,
all became great dignitaries of the Kingdom, high in rank
and influence, as some of them, among all the changes in our
institutions, still remain. Thus there arose a new kind of
nobility, nobility by service, the nobility which gradually

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

attached to the Thegns or servants of Kings and Ealdormen,
and this nobility gradually supplanted the elder nobility of im-
memorial descent. Men pressed into the service of powerful
leaders, till such service became the necessary badge of any-
thing like distinguished rank. . . . The King’s Thegns formed
the highest rank of gentry ; the Thegns of Ealdormen and
Bishops formed a lower class. Again to use a modern parallel,
the ancient Eorl answers to the gentleman of ancient family,
looked at simply as the descendant of certain forefathers and
the owner of certain property ; the Thegn answers to the gentle-
man whether with or without such ancestry, looked at as
holding, by royal or other commission, his place in the local
magistracy and the local military force.

The Comitcitiis — the Thegnhood , as we may call it — thus grew
and developed and became the central institution of the State.

. . . The institution of the comitatus , which in its origin was
essentially voluntary, was, as it were, pressed upon all men, till
at last it became a principle that no man should be without
his Lord. The freeman might choose his Lord, he might deter-
mine to whom, in technical phrase, he should commend himself ;
but a Lord he must have, a Lord to act at once as his protector
and as his surety, at once to watch over him and to give a
guarantee for his good behaviour. This practice of commenda-
tion , or choosing a Lord, must be carefully borne in mind,
not only on account of its vast importance in the social con-
dition of England and other Teutonic countries, but because
we shall presently see the same process applied to international
transactions on a great scale.

The growth of the power of the King and of his Thegns
no doubt tended, in England as elsewhere, to the degradation,
at least for a while, of the lowest class of freemen. The
Ceorl was fast sinking into the Villain. Still, even in the worst
times, enough of the old spirit remained in our laws to give
the Villain the means of obtaining enfranchisement, which did
gradually enfranchise the whole class, without the institution of
Villainage being ever formally done away with. And the up-
rooting of the old communities was necessary, if England was
ever to become a great and united nation. We must remember
that the Kingdom, like all our ancient divisions, from the shire,

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST

perhaps from the hundred, upwards, was formed by aggregation
of smaller divisions. The unit is the Mark, roughly represented
by the modern parish or manor. . . . The Shire is formed by
the aggregation of Marks, and the Kingdom by an aggregation
of Shires. ... It is possible that the circumstances of the Eng-
lish Conquest of Britain may have hindered the Mark from
ever possessing the same amount of independence in England
which it possessed in the older Teutonic lands. ... The first
followers of Cerdic no doubt settled themselves in Marks,
forming self-governing communities ; but they must all have
held themselves ready to march at Cerdic’ s command, when-
ever it was either needfuk Vo rgpffl a$ in-rpad, of Ihe Welsh, or
desirable to make a tf^sh" ’nroad upon tkemK Still >such com-
munities, the Mliek and the Shire, however dependent uexter-
nally on some' ^ntrkl authority, were doubtless interh&lly se}f-
governed* from the beginning?® W,e have*, .already seeivtipw
Shires, ruled "each one by it $ ;own ' E#JdpBfrarv coalesced mtp
Kingdom^, mnder a single King. . . . But thh nature of the
process differed in different parts o'f the country: in Mercia,
for instance, wholly independent states were thus brought into
union; while in Wessex, though there were many Ealdormen,
and even many Kings, there was still a certain unity from the
first. There was always a head King of the West Saxons, and
probably all the under-Kings were ^Elthelings of the blood
of Cerdic. . . . Gradually the connexion became closer. . . .
The head King became the only King, the only independent
Executive, and the assembly of his Witan became the only
independent legislature. In place of Kings, independent or
dependent, the Shires received Ealdormen, named by the King
and his Witan, and liable to be removed by them. . . . But
beside the Ealdorman arose a new officer, the Scirgerefa ,
Shirereeve , or Sheriff, the immediate officer of the king, the
agent of the central authority, the representative of the depen-
dence of each local division on the common King and As-
sembly of the nation. Once the Shires were the units, out
of the amalgamation of which the Kingdom was formed ; now
the Kingdom forms a new whole, of which the Shires have
sunk to be mere administrative divisions. . . .

By these means those great Kingdoms were formed which

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

produced Bretwaldas, and contended for the supremacy of
Britain. Each stage of amalgamation increased the kingly
power ; each stage lessened the independence of local commu-
nities, and lessened the importance of their individual members.
The democratic character of the old Teutonic system contained
the seeds of its own destruction, whenever it should be applied
to districts of any great extent. We may be sure that every
Teutonic freeman had a voice in the Assembly — the Gemot ,
the Gemeinde , the Ekklesia — of his own Mark : in fact, he
in some sort retains it still, as holding his place in the parish
vestry. He had a voice ^—it might be too much to say that
he had a vote^p fgr, in; an ^arlj stage cof things, formal divisions
are not likely to be ofteti taken ; The temper of the assembly is
found /but by ‘easier means. But the - ijian/Wffio clashed his
armb0tb* Express approval, or who joined iiTthre unmistakeable
sotiri4 which expressed dissent, practically gave as c efficient: a
Wote as if he had' sojeninly waJked out into a lobby, i . . The
Vpice which the simple freeman, the Ceorl, had in the , assembly
of Jiis mark, he would not lose in the assembly of his shire, the
Scirgemot. The County Court is to this day an assembly of all
the freeholders of the shire. But the right of attending the
Assembly of the Shire would become really less valuable than
the right of attending the Assembly of the Mark. The larger
the assembly, the more distant the place of meeting, the more
difficult, and therefore, the more rare, does the attendance of
individual members become, and the smaller is the importance
of each individual member when he gets there. Then, no
doubt, as well as now, a man who was a great man in the
Assembly of his own Mark, who was somebody in the Assembly
of his own Shire, would find himself nobody in an assembly of
the freemen of all Wessex. ... We cannot doubt that every
freeman retained in theory the right of appearing in the
Assembly of the Kingdom, no less than in the Assemblies of
the Mark and of the Shire. . . . But such a right of attendance
of course became purely nugatory. The mass of the people
could not attend, they would not care to attend ; they would
find themselves of no account if they did attend. They
would, therefore, without any formal abrogation of their right,
gradually cease from attending. The idea of representation

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

had not yet arisen ; those who did not appear in person had no
means of apoearing by deputy ; of election or delegation there
is not tne slightest trace, though it might often happen that
those who stayed away might feel that their rich or official
neighbour who went would attend to their wishes and would
fairly act in their interests. By this process, an originally
democratic assembly, without any formal exclusion of any class
of its members, gradually shrank up into an aristocratic
assembly. . . . The great officers of Church and State, Ealdor-
men, Bishops, Abbots, would attend ; the ordinary Thegns
would attend more laxly, but still in considerable numbers ;
the King would preside ; a few leading men would discuss ;
the general mass of the Thegns, whether they formally voted
or not, would make their approval or disapproval practically
felt ; no doubt the form still remained of at least announcing
the resolutions taken to any of the ordinary freemen whom
curiosity had drawn to the spot ; most likely the form still
remained of demanding their ceremonial assent, though without
any fear that the habitual “ Yea, yea,” would ever be exchanged
for “ Nay, nay.” It is thus that, in the absence of representa-
tion, a democratic franchise, as applied to a large country,
gradually becomes unreal or delusive. A primary assembly, an
Ekklesia , a Landes gemeinde , is an excellent institution in a
commonwealth so small as to allow of its being really worked
with effect. But in any large community, it either becomes
a tumultuous mob, like the later Roman Comitia, or the
Florentine Parliament, or else it gradually shrinks up into
an aristocratic body, as the old Teutonic Assemblies did both
in England and on the Continent. . . .

Thus was formed that famous assembly of our forefathers
called by various names, the Mycel Gemot , or Great Meeting ,
the Witenagembt , or Meeting of the Wise ; sometimes the My eel
Getheaht , or Great Thought . But the common title of those
who compose it is simply the Wit an, the Sapientes , or Wise
Men . In every English Kingdom we find the royal power
narrowly limited by the necessity under which the King lay of
acting in all matters of importance by the consent and authority
of his Witan ; in other words, of his Parliament. ... As to the
constitution of these Great Councils in any English Kingdom*

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

our information is of the vaguest kind. The members are
always described in the loosest way. We find the Witan
constantly assembling, constantly passing laws ; but we find no
law prescribing or defining the constitution of the Assembly
itself. ... It is therefore utterly vain for any political party to
try to press the supposed constitution of our ancient National
Councils into the service of modern political warfare. The
Meeting of the Wise has not a word to utter for or against any
possible Reform Bill. In one sense it was more democratic
than anything that the most advanced Liberal would venture
to dream of ; in another sense it was more oligarchic than
anything that the most unbending Conservative would venture
to defend. Yet it may in practice have fairly represented the
wishes of the nation; and, if so, no people ever enjoyed more
complete political freedom than the English did in these
early times. For the powers of the ancient Witenagemot sur-
passed beyond all measure the powers which our written Law
vests in a modern Parliament. . . . The King could do abso-
lutely nothing without the consent of his Wise Men. First of
all, it was from them that he derived his political being, and it
was on them that he depended for its continuance. The Witan
chose the King, and the Witan could depose him. The power
of deposition is a power which, from its very nature, can be
exercised but rarely; we therefore do not find many kings
deposed by Act of Parliament, either before or after the
Norman Conquest. But we do find instances, both before and
after that event, which show that, by the ancient Constitution
of England, the Witan of the land did possess , the right of
deposing the sovereign ; and that on great and emergent

A. d. occasions they did not shrink from exercising that right. . . .

755 Sigeberht of Wessex, in the eighth century, was deposed by
the vote of the General Assembly of his Kingdom, and another
King elected in his stead. ^Fthelred the Second was deposed
1013 by one act of the legislature, and restored by another : Edward
the Second was deposed by Parliament, so was Richard the
Second.1 . . .

1 Charles the First was not deposed. He was tried and executed, being
king, a process of which English history certainly supplies no other
example.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

If the Witan could depose the King, still more undoubtedly
did the Witan elect the King. ... In every Kingdom there
was a royal family, out of which alone, under all ordinary cir-
cumstances, the Kings were chosen, but within that royal family
the Witan of the land had a free choice. The eldest son of the
last King would doubtless always have a preference ; if he was
himself at all worthy of the place, if his father’s memory was at
all cherished, he would commonly be preferred without hesita-
tion, probably chosen without the appearance of any other
candidate. But a preference was all to which he was entitled,
and he seems not to have been entitled even to a preference
unless he was actually the son of a crowned King. If he were
too young, or otherwise disqualified, the electors passed him
by, and chose some worthier member of the royal family.
Alfred and Eadred were chosen in preference to the minor
sons of elder brothers. Eadward the Confessor was chosen
in preference to the absent son of an elder brother. . . .
And as a certain preference was acquired by birth, a certain
preference was acquired by the recommendation of the
late king. So Eadgar recommended his eldest son Eadward
to the electors : so Eadward the Confessor recommended
Harold. . . .

An ancient English King then was, as his very title implied,
not the father of his people, but their child, their creation.
And the Assembly which had elected him and which could
depose him, claimed to direct him by its advice and autho-
rity in almost every exercise of the kingly power. Every act
of government of any importance was done, not by the King
alone, but by the King and his Witan. . . . The King and his
Witan, and not the King alone, concluded treaties, made grants
of folkland, ordained the assemblage of fleets and armies,
appointed and deposed the great officers of Church and State.

. . . Our ancient Gemots enjoyed every power of a modern
Parliament, together with some powers which modern Parlia-
ments shrink from claiming. Even such a matter of detail as
the special security granted to the persons of members of the
two Houses has been traced, and not without a show of proba-
bility, to an enactment which stands at the very front of
English secular jurisprudence, the second among the laws

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

ordained by our first Christian King and the Witan of his
kingdom of Kent.

As the powers of the Witan were thus extensive, as the King
could do no important act of government without their consent,
some may hastily leap to the conclusion that the ancient
English King was a mere puppet in the hands of the National
Council. No inference could be more mistaken. Nothing is
clearer in our early history than the personal agency of the
King in everything that is done, and the unspeakable difference
between a good and a bad King. . . . When the King had no
will, or a will which the Witan could not consent to, then of
course the machine gave way, and nothing was to be seen
but confusion and every evil work. . . . Enormous influence
attached to the King from his having all the chief men of the
land bound to him by the personal tie of Thegnship. . . . He
was not the less the fountain of honour and the fountain of
wealth because, in the disposal of both, he had certain decent
ceremonies to go through. . . . Altogether, narrowly limited as
were the legal powers of an ancient English King, his will, or
lack of will, had the main influence on the destinies of the
nation, and his personal character was of as much moment
to the welfare of the State as the personal character of an
absolute ruler.

The King and his Witan, then, in their joint action, formed
the supreme legislature and the supreme tribunal of the
English kingdom. That kingdom, from ./Ethels tan onwards,
took in the whole Teutonic portion of Britain, together
with those Celtic lands to the south-west which had been in-
corporated and, to a great extent, Teutonized. . . . But this
kingdom of the English was not the only title and dignity to
which the house of Cerdic had attained. The King of the
English was also Emperor of the whole Isle of Britain. . . .
The fact that the West-Saxon or English kings, from Edward
the Elder onwards, did exercise an external supremacy over
the Celtic princes of the island is a fact too clear to be mis-
understood by any one who looks the evidence on the matter
fairly in the face. . . . There was nothing unusual or degrading
in the relation ; if Scotland, Wales, Strathclyde, commended
themselves to the West-Saxon king, they only put themselves

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

in the same relation to their powerful neighbour in which every
continental prince stood in theory, and most of them in
actual fact, to the Emperor, Lord of the World. . . .

But it is here needful to point out two distinct events which
have often been confounded with the commendation of Scot-
land, a confusion through which the real state of the case has
often been misunderstood. In the eleventh century at least, if
not in the tenth, the King of Scots stood to his English over-lord
in a threefold relation, grounded on three distinct acts which
are popularly confounded. In this matter, as in so many
others, prevalent ignorance is strengthened by inattention to
historical geography. As it is hard to make people under-
stand that there has not always been a Kingdom of France
including Marseilles and Strasburg, perhaps even including
Nizza and Chambery, so it is hard to make people understand
that there have not always been Kingdoms of England and
Scotland, with the Tweed and the Cheviot Hills as the boun-
daries between them. It must be borne in mind that in the
tenth century no such boundaries existed, and that the names
of England and Scotland, as geographical terms, were hardly
known. At the time of the Commendation the country which
is now called Scotland was divided among three quite distinct
sovereignties. North of the Forth and Clyde reigned the King
of Scots, an independent Celtic prince, reigning over a Celtic
people, the Piets and Scots. . . . South of the two great firths
the Scottish name and dominion was unknown. The south-
west part of modern Scotland formed part of the kingdom of
the Strathclyde Welsh, which up to 924 was, like the kingdom
of the Scots, an independent Celtic principality. The south-
eastern part of modern Scotland, Lothian, in the wide sense
of the word, was purely English or Danish, as in language it
remains to this day. It was part of the kingdom of N orthum-
berland, and it had its share in all the revolutions of that king-
dom. . . . The relation in which Scotland stood to England
was one of commendation ; the relation in which Cumberland
or Strathdyde stood to England was one of original grant. 1 . . .

1 In modern language Cumberland means a single shire which for ages
has been undoubtedly English. In modern language Lothian means three
shires which for ages have been undoubtedly Scottish. . . . But in the

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

The transactions which brought Scotland, Strathclyde, and |
Lothian into their relations to one another and to the English !
crown were quite distinct from each other. They were as
follows : First, the Commendation of the King and people of
the Scots to Eadward, in 924 ; secondly, the grant of Cum-
berland by Eadmund to Malcolm in 945 ; thirdly, the grant
of Lothian to the Scottish Kings either by Eadgar or Cnut. I
Eadward (the Elder) did not grant Scotland to Constantine,
because Scotland had never been his ; but Constantine and
his people, by their own act, put themselves in the same j
position as if it had been so granted. But Eadmund really
did grant Cumberland to Malcolm ; he granted him a territory
which he had himself conquered and which he might . have
kept in his own hands. . . .

Cumberland then was truly a fief of the crown of England,
but it was not a fief held within the kingdom of England. This
last position, popularly thought to be the position of Cumber-
land, was really the position of Lothian. The date of the grant
of Lothian (either by Eadgar or Cnut) is not perfectly clear. But
whatever was the date, as to the nature of the grant there can
be no doubt at all. Lothian, an integral part of England, could
be granted only as any other part of England could be granted, :
namely, to be held as part of England, its ruler being in the
position of an English Earl. . . . But a part of the kingdom which
was governed by a foreign sovereign, on whatever terms of de-
pendence, could not long remain in the position of a province
governed by an ordinary Earl. It was unavoidable that Lothian
should become an hereditary dominion of the Scottish Kings ;
it was almost unavoidable that it should gradually lose its
distinct character, and the remembrance of its distinct tenure,
and should be gradually merged in the mass of their other domi-
nions. By the time of the great controversy of the thirteenth
century the distinction seems to have been forgotten on both
sides, exactly as it was in the case of Strathclyde. The claims
of the English King were alike over the whole country, over

language of the year 945 Lothian was still an integral portion of England.
Cumberland meant a country, part of which is now English and part Scottish,
but which up to that time was neither English nor Scottish, but the seat of
a distinct Welsh principality.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST

Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian ; they were put forward as a
whole, and they were accepted or rejected as a whole. . . . The
alternative, by that time, had come to be whether Scotland, as
a whole — that is, Scotland proper, Scottish Strathclyde, and
Lothian — should be a fief of England or an independent king-
dom. ... It was then to be expected that Lothian, when once
granted to the King of Scots, would gradually be merged in the
kingdom of Scotland. But the peculiar and singular destiny
of this country could hardly have been looked for. . . . The
Kings of Scots, from the end of the eleventh century, became
English in manners and language ; . . . they learned to attach
more and more value to the English part of their dominions,
and they laboured to spread its language and manners over
their original Celtic territory. They retained their ancient
title of Kings of Scots, but they became in truth Kings of Eng-
lish Lothian and of Anglicized Fife. A state was thus formed
politically distinct from England, and which political circum-
stances gradually made bitterly hostile to England ; a state
which, indeed, retained a dark and mysterious Celtic back-
ground, but which, as it appears in history, is English in laws,
language, and manners — more truly English indeed, in many
respects, than England itself remained after the Norman Con-
quest. As in so many other cases, the people took the name
of their sovereign ; the English subjects of the King of Scots
learned to call themselves Scots, and their country Scotland.
Meanwhile the true Scots to the north of them, the original
subjects of the Scottish dynasty, forsaken as it were by their
natural princes, became the standing difficulty of their govern-
ment. The true Scots are known in history only as a mass
of turbulent tribes, alien in customs, language, and feeling from
those who had assumed their name — tribes which the Kings of
Dunfermline and Edinburgh had much ado to keep in even
nominal subjection. . . .

The King of the English was thus suzerain lord, or external
superior, of all the princes of the Isle of Britain. In that cha-
racter, from the days of ASthelstan onwards, our Kings assumed
titles beyond those of ordinary royalty — titles which, in strict-
ness, belonged only to the successors of Charles and of Con-
stantine. They appear in their public acts as Basileus , Ccesat\

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Imp er at or, Imp erator Augustus. Several questions at once arise.
Are these titles mere outpourings of vanity, mere pieces of
inflated rhetoric, mere specimens of the turgid style of the
tenth century ? Or do they imply a serious claim on the part
of the English Kings to be looked upon as something more
than mere kings, to be deemed the peers of the Lords of
Imperial Rome, Old and New? And, if they do imply such
a claim, from what was that claim understood to be derived ?
Did the Emperors of Britain in the tenth century inherit, or
claim to inherit, their imperial rank from the provincial emperors
who reigned in Britain in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries ? . . .
Or are we to see in these titles merely an imitation of the style
of the contemporary Roman emperors, Eastern and Western ?
These questions have given rise to a large amount of contro-
versy. My own belief, briefly to sum it up, is, that vanity and
the love of sounding titles may well have had some secondary
share in the matter, but yet that these titles were seriously meant
as a distinct assertion of the imperial position of the English
crown. But I do not believe that there was the least thought
of any succession from the ancient provincial emperors, or from
any phantom of imperial sovereignty which may have lingered
on among the Welsh at the time of the English Conquest or
afterwards. I believe that these titles were assumed in order
at once to claim for the English crown an absolute indepen-
dence of the Roman empire, ... to assert that the King of
the English was not the homager but the peer alike of the
Irnperator of the West and of the Basileus of the East, and
that Scots, Welsh, and Cumbrians owed no duty to Rome or to
Byzantium, but only to their father and lord at Winchester. . . .
It is, perhaps, worth notice that in all this we may see the
beginning of a system which has gone on to our own day.
From the days of Ecgberht onwards, the House of Cerdic has
never been without its dependencies. Their sphere has
gradually been enlarged ; as nearer dependencies have been
incorporated with the central state, another more distant circle
of dependencies has arisen beyond them. Wessex held the
supremacy over England ; England held it over Britain; Britain
held it over Ireland and a crowd of smaller islands and colonies ;
the United Kingdom holds it over colonies and dependencies

THE BA TTLE OF HASTINGS .

of every kind, from Man to New Zealand. Since the days of
the Roman Republic no other country has had so large an
experience of the relations between a central power and half-
incorporated states of various kinds. In this sense England is
now a more truly imperial power than any other in the world.
Putting aside the local associations of Rome and Constanti-
nople, no modern state comes so near to the notion of an
empire as understood either by ^Ethelstan or by Otto. There
is, therefore, an historical meaning in the familiar phrases of
“the British Empire ” and “the Imperial Parliament,” whether
any remembrance of ancient Bretwaldas and Basileis was or
was not present to the minds of those who devised them.1

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

A.D. I066.

{From “ Lives of the Kings of England by T. Roscoe, Esq.)

Duke William of Normandy was hunting in the forest
of Rouvray, near Rouen, at the moment when he heard of
Harold’s accession to the English throne. He was in the act,
says his domestic chronicler, of discharging his bow, when
a messenger arrived (January 1066) with tidings of the
death of Edward, and the coronation of King Harold. This
messenger was Tostig, the new monarch’s brother, who, on
ascertaining the fact from his spies at Calais and Boulogne,
rode post with the express object of rousing the Duke to the
invasion of England without delay. For some time William
appeared much affected, and lost in thought. The King’s
sudden death, and the successful treachery, as he considered it,
of Harold, pre-occupied his mind too painfully to enter into
any schemes with the traitor brother at such a moment. It
was not long, however, before he showed that he knew how to
avail himself of the vindictive and irreconcileable hatred of

1 Abridged from chapters i. ii, iii. of vol. i.

D 2

A. D.
1066

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

this bad man, against the more generous and noble-minded
Harold.

The Duke, it is added, unstringing the bow, which no one
else could bend, pensively resumed his way through the forest
towards the banks of the Seine, and, crossing the river, he retired
to his palace at Rouen. ... In great agitation he traversed
the hall with rapid strides, suddenly stopping and changing
his position and attitude, while not one of his attendants ven-
tured to approach him. At length one of his aged seneschals,
in whom he greatly confided, entering the room where the
Duke’s officers were assembled, they thronged around him, and
anxiously inquired if he knew the cause of their master’s extreme
emotion. “ I know nothing about it,” was his cavalier reply ;
“ but I soon shall,” he muttered to himself, as he drew nigh
and accosted William. “ What is the use, my liege, of trying
to conceal what everybody knows? You are troubled that
the King of England is dead ; and that Harold, violating his
sacred engagements, has seized the kingdom ! ” “ Of a truth,”

replied the Duke, “the death of King Edward and the injuries
of Earl Harold touch me nearly.”

As they were speaking, William Fitzosborne1 made his
appearance ; he possessed considerable influence over the
Duke’s mind, and now employed it successfully to restore his
equanimity and good humour. The advice he gave is too happy
and philosophical to be passed over in silence. “ No one,”
he began, “ ought to grieve and be angry at what he can
remedy; and still less at that for which there is no remedy.
Now there is no remedy for Edward’s death ; but there is with
respect to Harold’s life ; for you have power to wipe out your
injuries, and utterly to destroy him, you having justice upon
your side. Have you not a noble host of . followers, all pre-
pared to obey your behests ? What is there wanting but a bold
heart ? and a great undertaking once well begun may fairly be
said to be half finished.”

This cheering doctrine was extremely well-timed, for, though
bent upon the assertion of his claims, the Duke knew how to

1 Then Count and Commander of Breteuil, and famous for his own
exploits and those of his family, which he and his father raised to a degree
of splendour inferior only to that which attached to the crown.

THE BATTLE OE HASTINGS.

estimate enemies like Harold and the Anglo-Saxons. His
power of dissimulation was remarkable even at an early age ;
and it is evident that, in this studied passion, he was testing the
disposition and sounding the real sentiments of those around
him. His “emphasis of grief” was assumed to rouse the
attention and enlist the sympathies of the Normans, to influence
public opinion, and to prove how deeply he felt his presumed
wrongs.

When his well-feigned anger had exhausted itself, he called
a council of his lords and prelates at Rouen, and with their
concurrence despatched an embassy to England to remind
Harold of the sacred promise he had made to support his
ducal claims, and calling upon him to resign the crown.

During this mission William exhibited the same anxiety and
impatience, though he must have anticipated the nature of the
reply of Harold ; and he was doubtless actuated by the same
motive of keeping the public attention alive to his claims. He
laid before his great council the reply of Harold, purporting
that the King of England held himself in no manner respon-
sible to the Duke of Normandy, but that he would willingly
acknowledge him for his friend and ally provided he made
no demands upon the crown, in which event he declared him-
self his mortal enemy.

In addition to this council, William now summoned a more
special or privy council, consisting of his magnates, or chief
vassals and prelates, all leading men devoted to his interests,
including Odo, bishop of Bayeux, Robert, earl of Mortaine,
the Count d’Eu, Roger de Montgomery, Fitzosborne of Bre-
teuil, the Counts Longueville and Guiffard, Roger de Beau-
mont and his sons, with other intrepid and experienced leaders.
The Duke entered into a full narrative of all that had passed
between himself and Harold, at the close of which he affected
to submit the question to their decision and to abide by a
majority of voices. “ Sire,” was the unanimous reply, “ the
affair cannot remain in its present state. With God’s help
prosecute the enterprise, and not one of us but wall support
you to the utmost with our swords and fortunes.” This last
assurance must have been not a little consolatory to the Duke,
whose treasury, by dint of repeated wars and insurrections,

3§

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

and the public works which he had carried on, was not at that
moment in the most flourishing condition. Nor was the matter
at issue a mere question of succession, but of a great and
daring undertaking, calling for immense resources, such as
Normandy in itself could not supply, and only to be accom-
plished by putting it into the tempting form of a grand
territorial speculation, as well as of chivalrous adventure.

It was, as the Duke declared, solely by a combination of
energies and means greater than any he had yet developed that
they could hope for success. . . . But his courage rose with the
emergency , he saw that he must possess the sinews of war,
for that by war alone he could become a king. Its requisitions
could not be defrayed even by a general contribution of his
own people. He would require foreign support ; and, having
obtained the consent of his council of chief prelates and
barons, he convoked the general states as a preliminary step to
this desirable object. These, too, met at Lillebonne, and the
meeting was of a most stormy and dissentient character.

It seemed as if the proposition for pecuniary aid, made to
notables of the towns, to be afforded in the shape of a new tax,
had conjured up the spirit of discord, which put forth its most
convincing arguments to repudiate the idea of paying for the
conquest of England. Royal taxes, argued some of the
citizens, were a vile and heathenish invention ; but duke’s
taxes, levied for the conquest of new regions, were still more
intolerable, and not to be entertained for a moment.

The Duke took all in good humour, and by his energy and
eloquence succeeded in appeasing the tumult. It was then
proposed to pay in kind instead of money ; that is, to supply
him with the various munitions of war, troops, and transports.
The more refractory citizens suggested that they should find
quite enough to do to defend their own shores ; while others
declared they had neither money nor means to pay in any
shape ; and a third party had an insurmountable objection to
all foreign broils. The gallant Fitzosborne, blushing for the
parsimony or pusillanimity of his fellow-subjects, and eager to
set a better example, hit upon an expedient for reducing them
to reason, declaring that he would himself supply forty ships,
and suggesting that every one should subscribe something, have

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS .

his name recorded, and state the extent of his resources in a
private interview with the Duke. This proposal had the desired
success ; the mercantile body could not with any grace decline
it, and William, finding that he made little progress by the
usual measures, embraced the Baron’s opportune expedient,
and tried what he could effect by separating the refractory
body into its constituent parts. He is said to have honoured
each of the notables with an interview; when, exposed to
the terrors of his voice and frown, and unsupported by the
collected body which infuses so much courage into the indi-
vidual members, they were no longer able to refuse compliance
with his demands. The wealthiest were called upon first to
head the list ; the example of Fitzosborne, with his forty ships,
was followed by other loyal nobles ; and all ranks ultimately
became eager to have their names commemorated in this great
enterprise. . . .

The fate of England trembled in the balance. How best
to promote the grand invasion became the favourite topic of
all ranks. Even Norman ladies, like those of Sparta, invited
sons and consorts to join the banners of their conquering
sovereign ; and every country around appeared eager to swell
the already enormous list, the Papal power itself attaching its
name for the proscription of Harold and of Saxon England.

By a few only of William’s enemies was this great project
ridiculed as a wild and impracticable undertaking. Among
these was the young King Philip I. of France, his nominal
suzerain, and his envious vassals of Brittany and Anjou. But
William now summoned the latter, as their liege lord, to
attend him in their military capacity, at the same time holding
out promises of extensive grants, as an inducement to join his
banners. He next proceeded to St. Germain, to hold an inter-
view with the haughty and envious Philip. Without reflecting
on his own youth and inexperience, Philip presumed to lecture
the Duke upon what he termed the folly of such an expedition ;
and when William explained his plans and resources, instead
of entering into his views, he told him that he had better
remain at home, for he would find it quite as much as he
could do to take care of his own dominions. “ I am well
aware,” was William’s reply, “ that you stand in the position of

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

ray suzerain ; and if you consent to support me, I will acknow-
ledge you lord paramount of England also. But if not, I will
not. But God will support the right, and you will lose the
most powerful vassal that a lord sovereign ever boasted.”

The young king then assembled a council, at which it was
resolved to grant no aid to the Normans, inasmuch as, owing
to their great power, they at all times yielded reluctant fealty
to their lieges ; and, should the Duke now succeed, they would
become more refractory than ever. . . .

At the termination of this council, which had so completely
unveiled the Duke’s future policy, he was conducted by the King,
“ in a very irritated state of mind,” to his retinue ; and, upon
taking his leave, he observed, with marked emphasis : “If I
should succeed in my attempt, I shall consider myself bound
only to those who have assisted me.”

William’s next application was to his father-in-law, the Earl
of Flanders, This veteran statesman, who had contrived to
remain at peace, and preserve his alliance with opposite
parties, looked upon the matter purely in a mercantile light, and
with a view to the influence it might have on the value of his
manufactures, corn, and cattle. After mature deliberation, he
is stated at first to have declined holding any stake in the new
adventure. Upon being further urged, he declared that he
would only interfere on the condition of receiving a carte
blanche to fill up at his pleasure, as some compensation for the
risks he might incur. To this modest proposal William . . .
pretended to submit, and his considerate sire had the con-
science to fill it up with the sum of 3,000 marks, to be paid
yearly to the Flemish court, in consideration of certain vessels
and troops to be supplied. Other accounts, however, state
that the Duke refused to sanction these exorbitant demands,
informing the Earl that he would send a written answer to his
request. Then, having taken a piece of parchment, and care-
fully folded it without any contents, be directed it with this
superscription: “Your income from England shall amount
exactly to what you find written herein.” Upon whatever
terms, however, the contract was subsequently made, it is cer-
tain that the Duke obtained a handsome supply both of men
and ships from Flanders.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

William’s embassy to the Pope, conducted by his favourite
Lanfranc, was attended with even greater success. This he
gained by having respectfully submitted his cause, in the first
instance, to the judgment of Rome, which Harold omitted to
do, and was thereupon declared an usurper by Alexander II.,
proceeding upon a political maxim, uniformly observed by the
Papal See, to pronounce sentence in favour of those who apply
to it against those who do not, without any regard to the merits
of the case.

Having thus “ hallowed his enterprise in the eyes of the
world,” William resolved to pursue it, in the face of difficulties
such as none but a great and heroic spirit would have dared to
encounter. It was not with a cowardly, dispirited people he
was to contend. The long and peaceful reign of Edward
might possibly have rendered the Saxon militia somewhat less
formidable, but still the general temper of the nation was
warlike, nor was the tranquillity of those times so profound as
not to afford them some occasions of exercising their valour,
in which they nobly maintained their ancient reputation. An
English army, raised by Edward, had vanquished Macbeth,
and restored Malcolm Canmore to the kingdom of Scotland.
Another had very lately, and under the command of Harold
himself, subdued the Welsh.

Harold’s navy was much superior to that of the Normans,
both in the goodness of his ships and the qualities of his
sailors, as the Norman writers themselves acknowledge. He
was further strengthened by a close alliance with Denmark,
being of the royal blood of that nation by Githa his mother,
who was sister to Swain or Sueno, the then reigning king. . . .
On the side of Wales or of Scotland he had nothing to fear ;
the princes who governed the Welsh being attached to his
interests and the Scotch, under Malcolm, who owed his crown
to the English, having contracted a league of friendship with
that nation, on which Harold might rely with security. Among
his own people there was no discontent to invite or assist an
invader. His government was so gracious that, usurper as he
was, his subjects would have learned to love him. And, if we
may judge from what occurred in the reign of Edward, the
Normans were of all foreigners most odious to the English,

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

whose animosity against them had appeared in national acts,
and had overpowered the inclination expressed by Edward in 1
their favour. When all these circumstances are considered, it
may well be affirmed that there is no enterprise recorded in
history more surprisingly bold than this of the Duke of
Normandy. . . .

Within a few months William was enabled to assemble a fleet
of more than three thousand vessels, of all sizes, and an army
exceeding sixty thousand men, select and well-appointed troops,
commanded by some of the flrst leaders of the age. Vassals
and volunteers alike flocked to his standard ; adventurers from
the south vied with the heads of the first families in Nor-
mandy and the adjacent states. These contributed to form a
separate body, and to swell his veteran ranks.

The first appearance of the armament was at the mouth of
the river Dive. There, also, the Duke received a great accession
of strength. Alan Fergant (the son of Duke Hoel, of Brittany)
arrived at the head of five thousand men, and the Bretons were
speedily followed by other tributaries, allured by the amount
of grants, pensions, places, or lands, dowers for their daughters,
and rich English heiresses for the more adventurous bachelors. . .

Previously to joining his armament, William summoned
a council, at which he formally conferred upon his consort
Matilda the authority of duchess-regent, with the assistance of
a council, of which Roger de Beaumont was the president.
The Duchess and her court were present; and at the conclusion
of the ceremonies, turning towards his consort, the Duke
added : “ And let us not, lady, lack the benefit of your prayers,
nor those of your fair attendants, for the good success of this
our expedition.” He is said, also, to have associated his
eldest son Robert, then a youth of fourteen, with the Duchess in
the regency, assisted by the prelates and barons in council, to
whom he had committed so responsible a trust.

After being detained a month in the Dive by contrary
winds, the whole fleet succeeded in reaching the harbour of
St. Valery.

During William’s stay at this place some English spies,
whom King Harold had sent to discover the power of the
Duke, were taken. When they were brought before him, he

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS,

addressed them in these words : “ Your lord might well have
spared this charge. He needed not to have cast away his
money to learn what he will soon feel more speedily than he
expects. Tell him from me, if he meet me not in the place
where he thinks he may most safely set his foot before the end
of this year, he need never fear danger from me while he lives.”
Some of his nobles, expressing their apprehensions of Harold’s
power, he continued : “ I am glad to hear this opinion of his
great prowess ; the greater shall our glory be in prevailing against
him. But I see right well that I have small cause to fear his
discovery of our strength, when you, who are so near me, can
discern so little. Rest yourselves upon the justice of your
cause, and the foresight of your commander. Who hath less
than he who can justly term nothing his own ? I know more
of his weakness than ever he shall know of my strength till
he feel it. Perform you your parts like men, and he shall never
be able to disappoint either my assurance or your hopes.”1

William was assembling his vassals previously to hoisting
sail, when he was agreeably surprised by the arrival of his fair
consort in a noble and well-built vessel, constructed at her own
expense, and of which she made him an unexpected and
welcome present. Besides its grand proportions, it was de-
corated in a style of princely splendour, equalled only by its
power of sailing. Upon its prow it bore the effigy of their
second son, William, his face directed towards England with a
trumpet at his mouth, and bearing a bow with the arrow drawn
to the head. Upon its approach acclamations which rent the
air burst from the combined fleet; and scarcely had the Duchess
greeted her loving lord, when, as if auspicious of victory, a
breeze sprung up, and the Duke, leading the way in his gallant
vessel, ordered his blood-red flag to be hoisted throughout the
whole armament.

So great was the speed of the Mira that she quite out-
stripped the rest of the fleet. At dawn not a vessel was to be
seen, and William, ordering the crew to slacken sail, bade
the master ascend the topmast and report the distance of
. the squadron left behind.

“ What is it you see?” inquired the Duke.

1 Hayward, “ Lives of Norman Kings.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

“ Nothing yet, but sea and sky.”

“ Look out- sharply ! What see you now?”

“ I can see a few small specks afar off.” And, in a little
time, he added, “I can now see a forest of tall masts under a !'j
heavy press of sail.”

Rejoined by his fleet, William proceeded without farther
obstacle, and arrived next day in the bay of Pevensey, on the
Sussex coast, September 28, 10 66. So great was his impa-

tience to effect a landing unopposed, that, advancing first 1
among the archers, he leaped upon the shore. His foot slip-
ping as he touched the land, he fell ; but, with the same presence
of mind displayed by the great Julius,1 he grasped the earth
with both his hands, crying with a loud voice, “ By the splen-
dour of the earth, I have seized England with both my hands !” i
and he sprang up with a joyous countenance, thus addressing
himself to the earls and knights who followed him : “You
know, my lords, that without challenge no good prize can be j
made, and that which I have seized, I will with your help j
maintain ; for, in that case, God has surely appointed me to
conquer. He who shall impugn it, or say nay, let him do
battle with me.” A Norman knight, seizing the Duke’s idea
to turn the accident into a happy omen, and reinspire the
troops, who exclaimed that it was an evil sign, ran to a cottage
near at hand, and taking some of the thatch, exclaimed, “See,
Sire ! I gi'/e you seizin of this land, with promise that ere a
month you shall be lord over it.” “ I accept it,” was the Duke’s
reply ; “ and may God aid the right !”

Farther to refresh the spirits of his army and to remove any
sinister impressions, the Duke ordered ample rations to be
served out after a landing was effected ; and, having pitched
his tent upon the beach, he sat down with his lords and knights
to eat his dinner and drink success to their arrival in England.
One of the Duke’s first measures, however, was to despatch
some flying squadrons to ascertain the state of the surrounding
country before he encamped. Perceiving no signs of the

1 It is recorded of Julius Caesar that, on alighting from shipboard, in
Africa, his foot slipped, and he fell in the same manner. He also averted
the omen and turned it to good account, by exclaiming, “Africa, I hold thee
fast.”

THE BA TTLE OF HASTINGS.

enemy, he ordered fires to be lighted and preparations to be
commenced for encamping for the night. During the dinner
he is said to have made inquiries regarding two ships which
were missing. These were lost in a violent gale, and on board
of one of them was an astrologer, who had predicted a safe
passage and no opposition upon the part of Harold. On
hearing his fate, the Duke sarcastically remarked, “ He is in-
deed an ass who pretends to tell others what will happen them,
when ignorant how near at hand his own fate may be.” Wil-
liam had for some time been in anxious expectation of tidings
respecting the grand expedition from Denmark, simultaneous
with his own, and four days after his arrival he heard of Harold’s
victory at Stamford Bridge. Such a victory, however, was
almost as fatal as a defeat, and places the policy of William
in a still stronger point of view ; for the invasion of Tostig
and the Dane, just preceding his own, was more than enough
to decide the fate of Harold. The wily Norman employed his
allies, as the Turkish janissaries use their prisoners in the
onset of the battle, to impair the vigour and thin the numbers
of their enemies. ....

Upon being informed of the approach of Harold . . . the
Duke, having cheered his followers, proceeded to cut off
their last chance of escape, leaving them no safety except in
victory. He ran his vessels into deep water, and there scut-
tled them, so as to render them quite useless for the immediate
purpose of a home voyage. . . . He next selected an advan-
i tageous position for the site of a wooden fortress, to retreat
i upon in case of need, the materials of which he had brought
in his ships. Having put them together, he fortified and placed
in it a strong garrison. . . . The position he had taken up lay
between Pevensey and Hastings, and was admirably adapted
for a general action, especially for the evolutions of his
Norman horse. For a period of ten days not a single enemy
appeared. The exigency of Harold’s affairs had not permitted
I him to maintain another army such as that he had led into the
north ; and one unsuccessful battle upon the coast would go
i far to decide the fate of the country. . . .

But the rebel Tostig and the Dane, having united their
) forces, overthrown the Earls Morcar and Edwin, and taken

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

York, were directing their march upon the capital, when they
were intercepted by Harold, routed, and both slain. Their
fleet also fell into the hands of the victorious king, on the 25th of
September, 1066. Instead of waiting a sufficient time to refresh
and reinforce his gallant army, Harold now advanced eagerly
towards the invader, who received private intelligence “that
in four days the King would make his appearance at the head
of 60,000 veteran troops.” It was added “that William would
do well to consult his safety and retire in all haste to Nor-
mandy.” The Duke sent a reply “ that he was come into
England, not to run away but to fight if need be; and that,
had he only 10,000 men left, he would accept battle.” To
show how much he was in earnest, and to set an example to
his army, he omitted no occasion of sharing either peril or
fatigue. In making a reconnoissance at the head of a detaclv-
ment, he observed that Fitzosborne complained of the weight
of his armour. William desired his attendants to take it off
and place it over his own, and thus doubly laden rode back to
his tent through the ranks of his applauding countrymen.

Still desirous, if possible, to ascend the English throne with-
out increasing the national animosity by shedding blood, the
Duke left no means untried to settle the question before in-
volving the two nations in war. He first despatched a monk
in whom he had confidence, to remind Harold of the oaths he
had taken to support him in his succession to the kingdom
left to him by his relative King Edward. He implored him
not to disgrace Christianity by employing fire and sword, and
shedding the blood of the innocent for the guilty. Incensed
beyond control, Harold was on the point of striking the pre-
sumptuous monk, as he was proceeding to explain his master’s
object, and to inculcate its acceptance upon the king, had he
not been restrained by his brother Gurth, earl of York, who
motioned the good father to retire.

Harold then sent an embassy to William in his turn, and
the messenger was immediately introduced into the Duke’s pre-
sence. “What is Harold’s will ? ” inquired the Duke. “For
this am I sent by King Harold to the Duke of Normandy. He
bids you not to count upon any promise he may have made
when a captive, but to withdraw from the kingdom, upon which

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

condition King Harold will agree to repair your ships. If not,
he will come and give you battle, should you be rash enough
to bide his coming.” “ Tell him,” was William’s reply, “ that
I shall expect him in the open plain ; and he shall know me
by the colours I bear.” He then presented to the ambassador
a noble charger, a rich embroidered robe, and forty gold florins ;
a proof that he wras in no want of money. ... At the distance of
about seven miles from the Norman camp, King Harold took
up a position which he fortified with strong entrenchments.
It was well chosen, and its natural defences were such as to
protect it from attacks of the Norman horse, an arm in which
Harold was wholly deficient, as well as in bowmen, relying
upon the solid masses of his infantry, armed with sword and
battle-axe. His fortifications were so constructed as completely
to prevent them from being surrounded or outflanked by the
enemy, insomuch that, if his troops had only held their ground
without breaking order, in the pursuit, as their leader repeatedly
inculcated, the Normans must have forced positions almost
impregnable before they could claim the victory. In the centre
of the three great outlets from the wooden ramparts which he had
raised in front of his position, so as to admit of ample sorties
while they confined the enemy’s attacks, King Harold planted
the English standard. Having completed his arrangements,
turning towards his brother, he expressed a wish to reconnoitre
the Norman encampment. Mounting their swiftest steeds,
attended with a strong escort, they advanced so close as to
observe the Duke’s most minute arrangements, even up to his
very tent and the surrounding pavilions. “ What admirable
order ! and what numbers !” exclaimed Gurth ; and it is added
that, struck with the justice of this remark, Harold was dis-
posed to change his own plans, and consulted with his brother
upon the expediency of retiring upon London : a supposition,
however, scarcely consistent with this brave king’s previous
character and conduct. “ You should have adopted that line
of policy before,” was his brother’s reply ; “ it is too late now.
Retreat would be a flight, and carry consternation through all
your ranks.”

Upon their return, Harold despatched spies to ascertain as
nearly as possible the numbers of the enemy. They were

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

arrested and brought before the Duke. Instead of condemning
them to punishment, William ordered them to be conducted
through his camp, to be supplied with refreshments, and to
report what they had seen to their master, whose apprehen-
sions were by no means allayed by all that he heard. It was
observed that there were more priests in the Duke’s camp than
soldiers in King Harold’s army, a piece of intelligence which
must have been more surprising than gratifying to the clergy of
the Anglo-Saxon Church. But fortunately for them, it appears
that these supposed ecclesiastics were the Duke’s archers and
cross-bowmen, who, having their heads close shaven in the
Norman style, had been mistaken by Harold’s spies for members
of the priesthood.

Whether sincere, or only desirous to save appearances, the
Duke for some time persisted in his efforts to effect some kind
of compromise with Harold. He sent another deputation, ;
bearing three distinct propositions ; first, that Harold should
surrender the crown, upon certain conditions to be submitted to
him on the admission of such ground of negotiations ; secondly,
to make the holy pontiff, Alexander II. arbiter of the differences
between them ; thirdly, to decide their respective claims by
single combat, so as to avoid the effusion of so much blood. . . .

William, upon the rejection of these propositions, called
his council of great barons, and declared that, his different
letters and messages having been all employed in vain, he was j
desirous of acquainting them with his intention of holding a
personal communication with Harold himself. “ I will yet try
what I can do by seeing and speaking to himself. I wish to
convince him of the guilt of perjury, the punishment of which
he is about to bring upon his own head, should he longer
refuse to perform his sacred promise. Nay, if he would listen
to reason, I would consent that he should retain the entire
country of Northumberland, up to the borders of Scotland
itself.” . . . The baronial council approved of his motives, but
earnestly entreated that whatever he did should be done
promptly, as the militia and volunteers were pouring into
Harold’s camp every hour. “Upon my honour as a soldier,”
was the Duke’s reply, “if I fail to gain over Harold as a friend '
in this interview, the battle shall be fought to-morrow.”

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

Accompanied by only twenty knights, the Duke then
mounted his charger, and rode at speed towards the English
camp. Immediately in his rear, however, there followed a
hundred Norman knights, attended by one thousand men-at-
arms, who never lost sight of their prince’s person. When he
had reached the farthest barrier, noting well the excellent
position and its defences, he sent a messenger to Harold’s
tent, apprising him of his arrival, and his extreme desire to
hold parley with him in the open field, bringing with him such
lords and retainers as he might deem fit. He begged him not
to entertain the least suspicion, as his sole desire was to come
to some arrangement advantageous to them both. Harold’s
brother, Gurth, received the envoy ; but was instructed to send
him back with sharp words, declaring that the King refused to
speak with the Duke in the open plain, and that if the latter
had any further conditions to offer, he should send them by
letter, and the King would know how to answer them.

This uncourteous reply being reported to the Duke who
considered it in the light of an ultimatum, he declared “ that
he had left nothing undone to avert the dread appeal to arms,”
the fatal consequences of which no one was better able to
predict than himself. . . . Duke William now issued orders to
prepare for encounter on the morrow. Brief and anxious was
the interval ; and it is believed to have been more seriously
employed by the Normans than by the English. . . . The
priests, with croziers in their hands, and reading their litanies,
went through all the ranks, and visited all the positions and
outposts of the mighty host. Even after giving orders to his
several leaders, the Duke’s last public act previously to the
onset was, as usual with him, a religious one. Odo, bishop of
Bayeux, celebrated mass before the entire army, and invited
them to join him in a vow never more to eat flesh on the
anniversary of that day; a requisition with which, with the
awful chances before them, men of all ranks were easily in-
duced to comply. . . . By dawn of day (October 14) the Norman
army was drawn out in battle array, and William took his
station on a small eminence in front of his position, having the
relics, it is said, on which Harold had forsworn himself round
his neck, and with the consecrated standard unfurled by his

5°

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

side. 44 It is not only to acquire a kingdom,” he began, 44 that
I brought you hither, O gallant Normans, the first of men, the
most renowned for victory over thrice your numbers, far over
the deep sea. No ! for, while your devotion to my cause
deserves my warmest gratitude, it is to punish the English for
the murders and misdeeds committed by them. Did they not
slay in cold blood the young Prince Alfred, the brother of
their deceased king ? Did they not, by treason, rise and mas-
sacre the Danes throughout the breadth of the land, even at
public festivals to which they invited their victims ? and does
not the blood of your ancestors cry for vengeance from the
ground ? There, before you, stand the malefactors awaiting
their sentence ; such crimes deserve death ; and it is for you to
execute it at the point of the sword. By victory, O Normans !
you will obtain vengeance, fortune, spoil — yea, spoil beyond
your hopes ; by defeat, certain death ; for no bravery nor
conduct of mine can save you from that ignominious fate ;
there are no ships, and nothing is left but to assure yourselves
of the protection of Heaven, and in that to confide and
conquer.

44 If I become king of England, you will be the owners of
the land. Before you is the son of that Godwin who was
charged with the murder of my unhappy cousin. You only
can avenge me. Oh, remember the glorious actions of our
ancestors — the conquest of Sicily — your own exploits against
Henry of France, and his greatest allies ; and then think of all
the treasures which this country will afford you. You are
in a hostile country, unknown to you, and must make it
yours ; for before you is the sword, the vast ocean behind, and
no place of retreat ; so that, if you will not contend for glory,
you must fight for life.”

William had drawn up his army in three divisions, and now
gave orders for the attack. While putting on his armour, the
squires in their haste placed the back of his cuirass before,
upon which, observing that they regarded it as an evil omen,
he jested upon the matter : 44 1 have seen many who would
scarcely have ventured into the field, on account of a mere
error like this ; but I never believed in omens, nor in fortune-
telling, nor in divinations of any kind. My trust is in God

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

only ; and if this mistake dishearten you, I will give you cause
for joy ; for if it betoken anything, it is that the power of my
dukedom shall be made a kingdom, and that I, who was a
duke, shall be a king.” Again, he observed to the different
leaders and nobles before entering the field : “ To-day, assuredly,
my fortune will change; and I shall be a king, or nothing,
before nightfall.”

The grand consecrated banner was immediately advanced.
Rollo de Terni, earl1 of Conches, was the ducal standard-
bearer by old hereditary claim ; and the Duke, inviting him to
take charge of it, said : “ You carry it in right of your birth, and
I shall never deprive you of it.” That lord, however, as well
as Guiffard, count de Longueville, having declined the honour
upon the plea of more active duties, it was entrusted to the
hands of Toustain de Blanc, lord of Bee Crespin. The Duke
then called for his favourite steed, the famous Bayard, which
had been presented to him by the King of Spain, on occasion
of the Earl of Longueville returning from his pilgrimage to St.
Jago of Compostella. Extending his hand to take the reins of
his noble charger, as he is represented in the Bayeux Tapestry,
he vaulted into the saddle, while all around him expressed
their admiration of his martial appearance and splendid horse-
manship, as the fiery Bayard pranced and curvetted under his
princely burden. u Where,” cried the Count de Touzay,
“ shall we see a knight so fairly armed, who bears himself so
nobly, carries his heavy arms so lightly, or couches his lance
with so much grace ? Let him fight and he will overcome, and
shame befall him who shall fail him at need.”

A shout of exultation welcomed him as he rode along the
ranks ; and the spectacle of two such armies, led by the most war-
like and experienced generals of their age, has been described by
contemporary historians as grand and imposing in the extreme.
They were now in sight of each other; and the flower of
European chivalry was there assembled, the arbiters of empire

1 Cuens was the Norman title, from the Latin comes , ‘companion’ (to the
sovereign). In France Comte became the equivalent, and the word is
usually translated Count ; but as the rank answers to that of Earl, which
came to us from the Danes, some authors think it more English to use the
latter title even for foreigners. — C. M. Y.

E 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

upon that memorable battle-ground. Veterans and volunteers
of different states composed the bulk of the ducal army, in
which the great predominance of knights, nobles, and princes
was the distinguishing feature. Of the first of his three corps
William gave the command to Roger de Montgomery, and to
Fitzosborne, count de Breteuil ; of the second, to Geoffrey
Martel, attended by Hugues, a German prince of high repute,
and some Norman leaders of known skill. The Duke placed
himself at the head of the third, formed wholly of Normans,
including his cavalry, which had special instructions to support
the confederate bodies upon either wing, as the exigencies
of the day might require. In this likewise was placed the
reserve, under his immediate orders, to be advanced only in
case of possible extremity, to retrieve the fate of the day. The
archers filled up the point of each corps, discharging also the
duty of light troops or voltigeurs , and in this order they
advanced to the attack.

Before the papal banner, borne by Toustain the Fair, rode
the gigantic warrior and minstrel Taillefer, singing the famous
song of Roland, the chivalrous peer of Charlemagne, in which
the whole army joined. Advancing at the head of the army,
the warrior-minstrel challenged any one of the English to a
single combat, which being accepted he slew the first and second,
but was himself slain by the third assailant. Upon this the.
Normans commenced the attack.

Harold had arrayed his army in two divisions : the first
destined to defend his entrenched positions, advantageously
chosen upon an eminence ; the second chiefly composed of the
militia and London bands, forming the rear-ward and reserve ;
and here, too, the royal standard of England — a warrior armed
— was displayed. He had resolved to act upon the defensive,
and, being deficient in cavalry, he had strengthened his van
and advanced body with select troops, added to the men of
Kent, who, from long custom, claimed that post of honour,
and who, after skirmishing with the enemy’s light infantry, fell
back upon the dense masses in their rear. King Harold, like
the Duke, had harangued his troops with great spirit previously
to their joining battle. He recalled to their remembrance the
miseries they had sustained, especially from the Danes, by their

THE BA TTLE OF HASTINGS .

subjection to a foreign yoke. Would they tamely behold the
spoil and ruin of their common land, their free government,
their wealth, their long prosperity under the good King
Edward, — of their wives, their children, their homes ? He
painted in strong colours the rifling of their property, the
destruction, or, what is worse, the oppression and slavery of all
classes of the people. “ Whether,” he concluded, “ you are to
endure these, or never to fear them more, depends upon your-
selves, and must be sought in the result of this day’s fight.
Be men ! close firm your ranks ; obey my voice, and acquit
yourselves as you shall see your king.”

In point of strength and numbers the armies were nearly
equal. In nerve and muscle the English were far superior, as
their large and well-knit frames, the size of their poleaxes and
swords, and the length of their darts, in addition to the strength
of their bucklers, sufficiently proved. They were also more
numerous and united than the Normans, acting upon the
defensive in serried bodies, protected by artificial bulwarks,
called pavises ; but all these were more than counterbalanced
by the Duke’s superior tactics, his greater experience and skill
in arms. He possessed an immense superiority as well in the
discipline of his army as in the character and numbers of his
bowmen and his cavalry, the absence of which in his army has
been pronounced a capital error on the side of Harold. Again
the Earl of York, the king’s brother, implored that he might
be permitted to lead the battle, while Harold himself, consult-
ing the safety of his people rather than his own, should com-
mand the reserve. “ If you are resolved to fight,” he argued,
“ you should employ your authority in collecting a new army to
meet the Normans in case of need. If you will commit the
conduct of this force to me, I will not fail to prove both the love
of a brother and the care and courage of a commander. For, as
I am not at all obliged to the Duke by oath, I shall either
prevail with a better cause, or die with an easier conscience.”
Harold strenuously opposed any alterations in his plans.
“ What,” he exclaimed, “ would you have me fly before a com-
pany of priests ! ” — alluding to the Norman custom of shaving
their chins from the example set by the Duke. “ But, what-
ever they are, I have digested in my mind the hardest events of

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

battle ; and never will I incur a suspicion of the infamy of
cowardice.” In this brave mood he met the battle.

The first onset of the Normans was terrible. It was such as
only Harold’s veterans, trained under his own eye, long inured
to war and victory, could have sustained ; for such were the
Duke’s precautions that, before they could close with the
Normans, they were saluted with a repeated storm of arrows,
such as had before swept the doughtiest chivalry of France
before it. But the English, though pierced with many a wound,
closed their ranks, and faltered not. They were instructed by
Harold to cover themselves by joining their targets, while they
advanced to close with the enemy. The Duke made the attack
with his right wing, a ‘division of which was commanded by
Robert Fitz-Beaumont, a young commander of great promise.
It was his object to carry the advanced position occupied by the
Kentish men, sustained by Harold and his veterans, and to
drive them back upon their entrenchments. Finding that his
deadly showers of arrows, though perfectly new to the English,
and for some moments opening their ranks by their death-bolts,
failed to produce the usual effect, and that his first onset was
as firmly received and repulsed as if not an arrow had flown,
the Duke ordered his heavy horse to make a charge through
the opened ranks of his archers and men-at-arms.

But the charge was received upon the point of the English
lance, the sole weapon on that eventful day to counterpoise
the power of the Norman cavalry and spear. Many a horse-
man reeled in the dust ; and upon renewing the charge, few
approached close enough to give the heroic English the same
advantage. The Duke immediately threw his squadrons into
wings, and through the open spaces he gave orders for the
veteran infantry to advance in line and charge. Then, indeed,
came the shock of battle — the veteran Normans composing
part of William’s centre coming to close handstrokes with the
unbroken van of Harold, consisting of his staunchest soldiers,
headed by the Kentish men. The conflict was maintained
with spirit on both sides. The carnage, like the shock, was
horrible ; spear and lance were thrown aside ; and the pole
and battle-axe and the sword were the only weapons employed.
The English asked no more than to fight hand to hand, and

THE BA TTLE OF HASTINGS.

took a fearful vengeance for the lives of their comrades who
had fallen by the arrows of the Normans. The latter began
to waver ; but the Duke was at hand to reinforce Montgomery
and De Beaumont at the weak points ; yet, while he main-
tained the combat, he was unable to gain the least ground, much
less to dislodge the English. It was in vain that the archers
plied their bows, followed by the men-at-arms, who opened the
spaces for the repeated charges of the cavalry, gallantly made
only to be more gallantly repulsed.

Harold, too, had fortified his line of entrenchments in such
a manner as to provide his men with some cover from the long-
bows and spears of the Normans, and give due advantage to
the old English battle-axe in a close defensive contact with
William’s serried ranks. “ Their feet steady, their hands dili-
gent, their eyes keen and watchful, their hearts resolute ; their
cool, stern valour was not misguided by their hate ; nor was
their hate cooled by their wary courage.”

The Duke, after some hours’ conflict of this deadly kind, was
scarcely able to keep his front ranks in order, although sup-
ported by fresh reinforcements, and the renewed attacks of his
horse. With them the English veterans knew how to deal ; their
only annoyance and their dread was of the winged arrows, which
showered so thick that they seemed to have the enemy in the
midst of them. Neither steel nor target was proof against these
missiles ; for every hand, every finger’s breadth, was an exposed
point for many a piercing wound ; and the Normans, by shoot-
ing into the air, over the heads of the foremost ranks, slew
numbers in the centre and rear destined to reinforce the van.

King Harold, however, showed himself equal to the emer-
gency. He was in every part of the field where the pressure
was most formidable or where danger called him. Under
many disadvantages he displayed all the bravery of a veteran,
and the skill — according to the military practice of England at
that period — of a great commander. He repaired all disasters,
reinforced the weak points, and closed the broken ranks. He
kept them in firm array, each portion of his force aiding the
other, so as not only to bear the full brunt of the enemy’s
shocks, but to shake their opposing squadrons till they had
difficulty to maintain their ground.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

In the rear of his entrenched camp the King had constructed
a breastwork made of strong osier branches, bound with ropes
and supported by wooden . pillars, which resisted the arrows.
From behind this defence his soldiers could issue forth, and
mount the rampart in front, as safely as if they were clothed
in complete armour.

To carry this position the Normans must have entered the
trenches and thence scaled the barriers ; and the moment they
gained the parapet the battle-axes would come into play. The
Duke, alarmed to find that he could make no impression, and
that his troops were evidently losing confidence, ordered his
second line of veteran Normans to advance, while he directed
the archers to give their arrows such an aim as to ensure their
falling within the English barriers, not against them.

In this attack the Duke exposed his person so far that it was
more than once reported he was slain. He had three horses
killed under him, and often necessarily alighted to fight on foot.
His power of endurance was great; and he thus set an inspirit-
ing example to his soldiers, applauding the brave, rebuking the
slow, and shouting out with vehement gestures that it was a
shame for them, who had been victorious over all the nations
they had encountered, to be so long withheld by the English
from plucking the crown of victory. It was solely by the
strength of such authority and example that he could sustain
the sinking spirits of his troops, who, in fair and close encounter
with the English, showed their physical inferiority ; a distinction
which was still more marked with regard to the other foreigners.

This renewed attack was conducted upon a larger scale,
strongly reinforced, but met with no better success. In a con-
flict for the possession of the first of the three barriers in the
centre outlet the slaughter was terrific ; William advanced a
fresh body of his Normans, all the efforts of the confederates
being in vain ; and it was then that the rage and horrors of
this desperate combat reached their height. The loud cries
of the English, engaged hand to hand with William’s veterans,
added to its terrors. “ Holy Rood ! God Almighty ! ” was
their battle-cry, as they struck the death-blow upon the foe
with the last expiring energy of hate. Elarold, though he had
been wounded by the Duke’s stratagem of shooting over the

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

barriers, was still seen encouraging his troops. Keeping his
ranks close, he repeatedly admonished them that they should
cutoff the heads of the Norman spears with their axes/and
then slay their enemy, but for no consideration to break their
order.

Unhappily, this injunction was repeated in vain. The error
committed by the English was fatal — one that in war can never
be committed twice. The third sustained attack of the Nor-
mans having been repelled, they issued from their positions in
great numbers, eager in pursuit ; the retreat, if not feigned,
was conducted with great order, and the English were in turn
repulsed. Still they retained their former position ; they had
been engaged from break of day, and it was now high noon.
After several ineffectual efforts, the Normans again began to
give way ; another report of the Duke’s death being circulated 1
added to the alarm ; and if Harold at this juncture could have
advanced in compact order, the victory had been his own.

The Duke, however, was soon seen traversing his front ranks
at full gallop, with his half-brother, Odo, holding the crozier,
riding at his side. A few minutes later his appearance would
have probably failed to retrieve the battle.

Perceiving that open attacks were of no avail, the Duke, after
having restored order, had recourse to one of his favourite
stratagems. He ordered a general attack on the positions of
the English, by his whole line, but added secret instructions
that, in the heat of the melee, his soldiers should again retreat ;
and on this last occasion Harold could no longer restrain the
impetuosity of his troops. Of a frank and noble spirit, their

1 The report having gained the rear, where an immense number of Nor-
man clergy were awaiting the result, a general panic arose among the
priests, clerks, and varlets, who were left with the women in charge of the
baggage. They were with difficulty prevented from taking to instant flight,
Several of the prelates had retired with the Bishop of Coutances to an emi-
nence, whence they made earnest intercession with prayer; but their chief con-
fidence lay in the valour of their brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who fought
like a lion, and occasionally hastened from William’s side to raise their
sinking spirits. He now arrived very opportunely to stop their retreat, and
having refreshed himself with some cups of wine he resumed his arms, en-
couraged the soldiers, and acting the part of the Duke’s aide-de-camp, was
seen directing the officers and men at different points of the held. — W. Pict.,
Hist, de Nor .

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

ardent hope of victory carried them away. They fell into the
snare. The Normans, in compact order, turned upon their
pursuers, who had broken rank, and seizing the advantage,
pierced their squares on all sides, and made a cruel butchery.
Yet, in spite of fortune and of death, the English fled not,
but, throwing themselves into small squares, sustained the fierce
shocks of the enemy.

Other disasters, however, were at hand. The Duke, in giving
the signal to wheel and attack, ordered out his heavy horse and
his reserve, and it was in vain that the English still fought like
men who beheld the victory unjustly snatched out of their
hands. Thrice with his cavalry he charged the English wings,
while clouds of arrows darkened all the plain. From that
moment the battle was decided, for Harold had already fallen.
Towards the evening, while still unweariedly sustaining his
army with his voice and hand, he was struck with an arrow
through the left eye into the brain, and fell dead upon the field.
His two brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, were also slain, with
nearly all the nobles and knights, in the battle.

The old Anglo-Saxon heroism, worthy of a better fate, set
in that dark eclipse ; the battle-axe no longer availed against
the Norman spear. Each spot of ground where they stood
was a soldier’s grave. At length, having formed into one body,
they retired in tolerable order to a rising ground. Thence
they once more repulsed the Normans with great slaughter,
whose commander, Count Eustace, concluding that the Eng-
lish had received reinforcements, fled back to the Duke, de-
claring that if he advanced any farther he was lost. While thus
speaking he was struck to the ground, and the blood gushed
from his nose and mouth. A number of Norman lords and
knights fell in this last deadly conflict, till the Duke withdrew
his advanced force, and the English were permitted to retire
unmolested. A considerable body of Normans perished in
attempting the pursuit over low, marshy grounds, covered with
sedges and reeds, where they were either stifled or destroyed
by their enemies, who were well acquainted with the localities
of the spot.

When the English retired to the acclivity, the Normans,
entering the entrenchments, renewed the carnage at every step.

THE BATTLE OE HASTINGS.

In the last attack the Duke had another horse killed under him ;
but Toustain, at the head of the Norman knights, penetrated to
the royal standard. There it was that the gallant earl, Harold’s
brother, and the young Leofwin, fell covered with wounds. It
is stated by some writers that Harold himself had retired to
this hill, and that he had the grief of surviving to see the
Norman banners raised over the spot where the English ensigns
had waved. Certain it is that there was neither rout nor flight,
so great was the despairing energy with which the English
fought. King Harold’s army was exterminated, but not
vanquished, and England lay paralysed at the feet of the
Conqueror.

It is also a singular fact that there is no record of a single
prisoner having been made, or of a single English soldier
having turned his back or fled. It is thus evident that the
Normans owed their victory to William’s stratagem, and to the
use of the bow, both in reference to Harold’s death1 and to
the slaughter it inflicted from a distance. Yet the English
soon became the most formidable in that weapon of any nation,
and the best marksmen in the world. They could discharge
their bows ten or twelve ranks deep at the same moment, and
pierce almost as many of the enemy. It proved more fatal
than the harquebuss and the caliver when first brought into
use ; and the wound was of such a nature as more effectually
to disable the combatants, especially the horse.

It is asserted that the Conqueror, passing at night over the
field of battle, observed a soldier in the act of piercing the
dead body of a knight with his lance. It was the fallen King.
Indignant at the sight, he ordered the man to be discharged ;
esteeming it as dishonourable, says the chronicle, to strike an
enemy when dead, as to turn his back upon him in fight.

So terminated the memorable battle of Hastings, to the
astonishment of Europe, which had predicted William’s failure,
and perhaps to that of the Conqueror himself. . . . That night
the Duke pitched his tents upon the field which he had thus won.

1 The body of Harold is said to have been found amidst a heap of slain
by his mistress, Lady Edith “ with the swan’s neck,” who was induced to
make the search at the request of two monks of Waltham, sent by Harold’s
mother.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Soon after the ensuing dawn, he commanded his brother Odo
to celebrate mass, and sing requiems for the dead. Fie at first I
refused to restore to the weeping parent the body of her son ;
but afterwards gave it up with those of his two brothers to the I
queen-mother, by whom they were interred in the abbey of
Waltham. . . .

The day after the victory, the Duke returned to Hastings, Ir
about seven miles from the field, in order to refresh his army, j
and fix upon his plans of prosecuting his enterprise. He i
despatched messengers to announce his success to his friends ;j
and allies abroad. His duchess, now a queen, was found I
engaged in her devotions in the Benedictine priory of Notre
Dame, near St. Se'vere. The occasion was opportune for the
celebration of a Te Deum to the God of Battles, which was
immediately performed with due ceremonies ; and it was decreed i
that, from that time, the name of the priory should receive the j
pleasing addition of Bonnes Nouvelles — Our Lady of Good S
News — which it retains to the present day. To his Holiness |
the Pope William made a present of King Harold’s standard, ■
representing a warrior in the act of striking, wrought curiously i
with gold and precious stones.

The complete destruction, or dispersion, of the English army,
without an effort to rally ; the bold measures and rapid progress
of the Normans, with the national consternation every where
produced, at once opened William’s way to the long-disputed
throne. That throne is still filled by the descendants of the
Conqueror, and the greatest families in the realm date their
origin from the battle of Hastings. Even before he had
resumed his triumphal march, his arrival in the capital was
daily expected. A universal panic had seized the heart, and
for a moment prostrated the energies, of the country ; and its
greatest leaders, instead of rallying and summoning forth its
strength in their native districts, sunk under the blow, and
supinely awaited the destiny preparing for them.

With the Conqueror’s entry into London a new epoch in his
extraordinary and eventful career opens upon our view. The
military head of a small state seemed to have achieved in a single
battle the most adventurous and enterprising conquest in the
records of Europe. Assuming the monarch’s sceptre, he

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

thenceforth appears in the anomalous position of the ruler of
a comparatively free people, to whose laws he was bound to
subscribe, and who submitted, however unwillingly, on such
conditions to acknowledge him as their sovereign. The con-
sequences of such a compact were easily to be foreseen ; but
in the bitter fruits which it bore were also ripened the seeds
of British constitutional liberty.1

HEREWARD AND WALTHEOF.

A.D. I060 — IO77.

[From Li N G ard’ s ‘ 4 History of England. ’ ’)

A. D.

After the battle of Hastings William had fondly persuaded 1066
himself that the campaign was terminated, and that the
natives, disheartened by the fall of their king and the defeat
of their army, would hasten to offer him the crown. A few
days dissipated the illusion. . . . The Witan had assembled in
London immediately after the death of Harold. The popu-
lation of this capital was numerous and warlike; and the
number of its defenders had been increased by the thanes of
the neighbouring counties. By their unanimous choice, the
Etheling Edgar, the rightful claimant, was placed on the throne.

But Edgar was young, and devoid of abilities : the first place
in the council devolved on Stigand, the metropolitan ; and the
direction of the military operations was committed to the two
powerful earls, Edwin and Morcar. Their first effort was
in successful : and the confidence of the citizens was shaken
iy the feeble resistance which a numerous body of natives
lad opposed to an inferior force of five hundred Norman
lorse. William contented himself with burning the suburbs ;
ie was unwilling or afraid to storm the walls ; and resolved
0 punish his opponents by destroying their property in the

1 Abridged from chapter iv. of vol. i.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS,

open country. Leaving London, he spread his army over the
counties of Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire. Every-
thing valuable was plundered by the soldiers ; and what they
could not carry away was committed to the flames.

In the meantime mistrust and disunion reigned among the
advisers of Edgar. Every new misfortune was attributed to
the incapacity or the treachery of the leaders. It was even
whispered that Edwin and Morcar sought not so much the
liberation of their country, as the transfer of the crown from
Edgar to one of themselves. The two earls left the city ; and
their departure, instead of lessening, augmented the general
consternation. The first who threw himself on the mercy of
the Conqueror was Stigand, who met William as he crossed
the Thames at Wallingford, swore fealty to him as his sovereign,
and was received with the flattering appellation of father and
bishop. His defection was followed by that of others ; and
the determination of those who wavered was accelerated by
the rapidity with which the Norman pursued his plan of
devastation. Buckinghamshire and part of the county of
Hertford had been already laid waste, when a deputation
arrived, consisting of Edgar, Edwin, and Morcar on the part
of the nobility, of the Archbishop of York and the Bishops j
of Worcester and Hereford on that of the clergy, and of the
principal citizens of London in the name of their fellows. At
Berkhampstead they swore allegiance to the Conqueror, gave
hostages, and made him an offer of the crown. He affected
to pause : nor did he formally accept the proposal till the
Norman barons had ratified it by their applause. He then
appointed for his coronation the approaching festival of
Christmas.

The Normans, proud of their superior civilization, treated
the natives as barbarians. William placed no reliance on their
oaths, and took every precaution against their hostility. But
most he feared the inhabitants of London, a population brave,
mutinous, and confident in its numbers. Before he would
expose his person among them, he ordered the house which
he was to occupy to be surrounded with military defences ;
and on the day of his coronation in Westminster Abbey,
(December 25) stationed in the neighbourhood a numerous

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

division of his army. As Stigand had been suspended, the
ceremony was performed by Aldred, archbishop of York :
and that prelate put the question to the English, the Bishop of
Constance to the Normans, whether they were willing that
William should be their sovereign. Both nations expressed
their assent with loud acclamations ; and at the same moment,
as if at a preconcerted signal, the troops in the precincts of the
Abbey set fire to the nearest houses, and began to plunder the
city. The tumult within the church was not exceeded by that
without. The Normans pictured to themselves a general rising
of the inhabitants : the natives imagined that they had been
drawn together as victims destined for slaughter. William,
though he trembled for his life, refused to interrupt the cere-
mony. In a short time he was left with none but the prelates
and clergy at the foot of the altar.

The English, both men and women, had fled to provide for
their own safety ; and of the Normans some had hastened to
extinguish the flames, the others to share in the plunder. The
service was completed with precipitation, and the Conqueror
took the usual oath of the Anglo-Saxon kings, with this
addition, that he would govern as justly as the best of his
predecessors. To William, who sought to reconcile the two
nations, this unfortunate occurrence was a subject of deep
regret. It inflamed all those jealousies and resentments which
it was his interest to extinguish, and taught the natives to look
upon their conquerors as perfidious and implacable enemies.
To apologise for the misconduct of the Normans, it was alleged
that the acclamations of loyalty in the church had been mis-
taken for shouts of insurrection. But in that case, it was asked,
why did they not fly to the defence of the King? Why did
they pretend to put down a rising in one quarter by exciting
a conflagration in another ? There can be little doubt that the
outrage was designed, and that it originated in the love of
plunder. At Dover, the Normans under the very eye of their
leader could not be restrained from pillage ; at London, the
superior opulence of the citizens offered an irresistible tempta-
tion to their rapacity. This suspicion is confirmed by the
subsequent conduct of the King. He assembled his barons
and admonished them, that by oppression they would drive

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

the natives to rebellion, and bring indelible disgrace on them-
selves and their country. For the rest of the army he published
numerous regulations. Nor were his orders suffered to evapo-
rate in impotent menaces ; commissioners were appointed to
carry them into effect.

William has been represented as of a temper reserved and
morose, more inclined to acts of severity than of kindness :
but, if such were his natural disposition, he had the art to
conceal or the resolution to subdue it. All the first measures
of his reign tended to allay the animosity and to win the
affections of the English. No change was attempted in their
laws or customs, but what the existing circumstances im-
periously required. . . .

Access to the royal presence was refused to no one. William
listened graciously to the complaints of the people ; heard
their causes in person ; and though his decisions were directed
by the principles of justice, was careful to temper them with
feelings of mercy. From London he retired to Barking, where
his court was attended by crowds of English thanes. At
their request he received their homage ; and in return granted
to all the confirmation, to several an augmentation, of their
estates and honours. But nothing was more grateful to the
national feelings than the attention which he paid to the
Etheling Edgar. To console the Prince for the loss of that
crown to which he was entitled by his birth, he admitted him
into the number of his intimate friends, and bestowed on him
an extensive property, not unfitting the last descendant of an
ancient race of kings. . . . From Barking he made a progress
through the neighbouring counties. His route was distin-
guished by the numerous benefits which he scattered around
him, and his affability and condescension to the spectators
proved how anxious he was to procure their favour and to
merit their esteem.

In the month of March he collected his army on the
beach near Pevensey ; distributed to each man a liberal dona-
tive, and embarked with a prosperous wind for the coast of
Normandy. Fie was received by his countrymen with enthu-
siastic joy ; wherever he proceeded, the pursuits of commerce
and agriculture were suspended ; and the solemn fast of Lent

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

was universally transformed into a season of festivity and
merriment. In his train followed, not only the Norman barons,
the faithful companions of his victory, but also many English
thanes and, prelates, the proudest ornaments of his triumph.
The latter appeared in the honourable station of attendants on
the King of England ; in reality they were captives, retained
as securities for the fidelity of their countrymen. We are told
they attracted the admiration of the spectators, among whom
were many French noblemen whom curiosity had drawn to the
Norman court. In their persons the English were thought tc
exhibit the elegance of female beauty. Their hair (long hair
was a mark of birth with the Northern nations) flowed in ringlets
on their shoulders ; and their mantles, of the richest silks, were
ornamented with the profusion of Oriental magnificence. To
enhance in the eyes of his guests and subjects the value of his
conquests, William displayed before them the treasures which
he had either acquired as plunder after the battle, or received
at his coronation as presents. Of these a considerable por-
tion, with the golden banner of Harold, was destined for the
acceptance of the Pope ; the remainder was distributed among
the churches of Normandy and the neighbouring provinces. . . .

During his absence, the King had entrusted the reins of
government to William Fitz-Osbern, and Odo, bishop of
Bayeux.1 . . . The favour of William had promoted Odo at an
early age to the see of Bayeux, and he soon displayed extra-
ordinary abilities both in the administration of his diocese and
in the councils of his sovereign. . . . “ He was,” says a historian,
who had probably shared in his bounty, “ a prelate of such
rare and noble qualities, that the English, barbarians as they
were, could not but love him and fear him.” On the other
hand, we are assured by another well-informed and less partial
writer, that his character was a compound of vice and virtue ;
and that, instead of attending to the duties of his station, he
made riches and power the principal objects of his pursuit.

To Odo had been assigned the government of Kent; the
inhabitants of which, from their frequent intercourse with the
Continent, were considered less savage than the generality
of their countrymen. The remainder of the kingdom was
1 Odo was the half-brother of the Conqueror.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

committed to the vigilance of Fitz-Osbern, a Norman baron,
related on the mother’s side to the ducal family. William and
he had grown up together from their infancy, and the attach-
ment of their childish years had been afterwards strengthened
by mutual services. In every civil commotion Fitz-Osbern
had supported his sovereign ; to his influence was attributed
the determination of William to invade England ; and to the
praise of consummate wisdom in the cabinet, he added that of
unrivalled courage in the field. He was considered as the
pride of the Normans and the scourge of the English. . . .

As soon as these ministers entered on their high office,
they departed from the system of conciliation which the King
had adopted, and assumed the lofty mien and the arrogant
manners of conquerors. The complaints of the injured were
despised : aggression was encouraged by impunity. . . . The
refusal of redress awakened the indignation of the English ;
and in this moment of national effervescence, if an individual
had come forward able to combine and direct the general
hostility, the Norman ascendancy would probably have been
suppressed. But the principal chieftains were absent, and the
measures of the insurgents, without system or connexion,
were the mere result of sudden irritation, and better calcu-
lated for the purpose of present revenge than of permanent
deliverance. . . .

Desultory conflicts might indeed harass the Normans, but
they contributed little to prevent the entire subjugation of the
country, or to promote the great cause of independence. The
more prudent of the Saxons reserved their efforts for a fairer
prospect of success ; and deputies were sent to Denmark to
offer to Sveno Tiuffveskeg a crown which had been already worn
by two of his predecessors, Canute and Hardecanute. . . .

A-D- The mind of William was exasperated by frequent messages

°^7 from Odo and Fitz-Osbern ; and he returned to England in
December with a secret resolution to crush by severity a
people whom he could not win by kindness. During the
Christmas holidays the English thanes waited on their sove-
reign. He embraced them as friends, inquired into their
grievances, and granted their requests. But his hostility
pierced through the veil which he had thrown over it ; and

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF. 67

the imposition of a most grievous tax awakened well-founded
apprehensions. Though the spirit of resistance which had so
much annoyed his deputies seemed to disappear at his arrival,
it still lingered in the northern and western extremities of the
kingdom. Exeter, from the time of Athelstan, had gradually
risen into a populous city ; it was surrounded by a wall of
considerable strength ; and the inhabitants were animated with
the most deadly hatred against the invaders. A band of mer-
cenaries on board a small squadron of Norman ships which was
driven by a tempest into the harbour had been treated with
cruelty and scorn by the populace. Sensible of their danger,
the burgesses had made preparations for a siege, raised turrets
and battlements on the walls, and despatched emissaries to
excite a similar spirit in other towns. When William sent to
require their oaths of fealty, and the admission of a garrison
into the city, they returned a peremptory refusal, but at the
same time expressed a willingness to pay him the dues, and to
perform the services, which had been exacted by their native
monarchs. The Conqueror was not accustomed to submit to
conditions dictated by his subjects ; he raised a numerous
force, of which a great portion consisted of Englishmen, and
marched with a resolution to inflict severe vengeance on the
rebels. At some distance he was met by the magistrates, who
implored his clemency, proffered the submission of the inhabi-
tants, and gave hostages for their fidelity. With five hundred
horse he approached the gates. To his astonishment it was
barred against him, and a crowd of combatants bade him
defiance from the walls. It was in vain that, to intimidate
them, he ordered one of the hostages to be deprived of his
eyes. The siege lasted eighteen days, and the royalists suffered
severe loss in different assaults. The citizens at last sub-
mitted, but on conditions which could hardly have been
anticipated. They took indeed the oath of allegiance, and
admitted a garrison, but their lives, property, and immunities
were secured ; and to prevent the opportunity of plunder, the
besieging army was removed from the vicinity of the gates.
Having pacified Cornwall, the King returned to Winchester
and sent for the Duchess Matilda to England. She was
crowned at the ensuing festival of Whitsuntide.

f 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

A-D- But the presence of William was now required in the nortn.

°68 No Englishman had rendered him more important services
than Edwin, whose influence had induced one-third of the
kingdom to admit his authority. The Norman, in the warmth
of his gratitude, promised the Earl his daughter in marriage, an
engagement which he refused to fulfil as soon as he felt him
self secure upon the throne. Inflamed with resentment, Edwin
flew to arms; the spirit of resistance was diffused from the'
heart of Mercia to the confines of Scotland; and even the
citizens of York, in opposition to the entreaties and predic-
tions of their Archbishop, rose in the sacred cause of indepen-
dence. Yet this mighty insurrection served only to confirm
the power of the Norman, whose vigilance anticipated the
designs of his enemies. Edwin and Morcar were surprised
before they were prepared, and their submission was received
with a promise of forgiveness and a resolution of vengeance.
York opened its gates to the Conqueror; Archil, a powerful
Northumbrian, and Egelwin, bishop of Durham, hastened to
offer him their homage ; and Malcolm, the king of Scotland,
who had prepared to assist the insurgents, swore by his
deputies to do faithful service to William. . . .

In the spring of the same year, Githa, the mother of Harold,
and several ladies of noble birth, fearing the rapacity and
brutality of the Normans, escaped with all their treasures from
Exeter, and concealed themselves for a while in one of the
little isles of Stepholme and Flatholme in the mouth of the
Severn. Thence they sailed for the coast of Flanders ; and
eluding the notice or frustating the pursuit of their enemies,
found a secure retreat at St. Omer. Githa’s grandsons, Godwin,
Edmund, and Magnus, the children of the unfortunate Harold,
had found a protector in Dermot, king of Leinster. . . .

A more illustrious fugitive was the Etheling Edgar, who
undertook to convey his mother Agatha, with his sisters
Margaret and Christina, to Hungary, their native country.
But a storm drove them into the Frith of Forth; and Malcolm,
who had formerly been a wanderer in England, hastened to
receive them, conducted them to his castle of Dunfermline,
and by the attention which he paid to the royal exiles
endeavoured to evince his gratitude for the protection which

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF. 69

m similar circumstances lie had experienced from their relative,
Edward the Confessor.

William’s late expedition to York had produced only a
delusive appearance of tranquillity. The spirit of resistance
was still alive ; and if the royal authority was obeyed in the
neighbourhood of the different garrisons, in the open country
it was held at defiance. I11 several districts the glens and
forests swarmed with voluntary fugitives, who, disdaining to
crouch beneath a foreign yoke, had abandoned their habita-
tions, and supported themselves by the plunder of the Normans
and royalists. The King had sold the earldom of Northumbria
to Cospatric,1 a noble thane ; but now he transferred it, or the
county of Durham, to a more trusty officer, Robert de Cumin,
who, with five or seven hundred horse, hastened to take pos-
session. O11 the left bank of the Tees he was met by Egelwin, •
bishop of Durham, who informed him that the natives had
sworn to maintain their independence, or to perish in the
attempt, and advised him not to expose himself with so small
an escort to the resentment of a brave and exasperated people.

The admonition was received with contempt. Cumin entered A y>
Durham, took possession of the episcopal residence, and 1069
abandoned the houses of the citizens to the rapacity of his
followers. During the night the English assembled in great
force ; about the dawn they burst into the city. The Normans,
exhausted by the fatigue of their march and the debauch of
the last evening, fell for the most part unresisting victims to
the fury of their enemies ; the rest retired in haste to their
leader at the palace of the Bishop. For a while they kept their
pursuers at bay from the doors and windows ; but in a short
time the house was in flames, and Cumin, with his associates,
perished in the conflagration. Of the whole number, two only
escaped from the massacre. . . .

This was the most busy and eventful year in the reign of
William. In June the sons of Harold, with a fleet of sixty-
four sail, returned from Ireland, and landed near Plymouth.

They separated in the pursuit of plunder, but were surprised
by Brian, son of the Earl of Bretagne. The leaders escaped

1 Cospatric was the grandson of the Earl Untred, by Elgiva, a daughter
of K ing Ethelred. — C. M. Y.

HIS T ORICA L SELECTIONS .

to their ships ; almost all their followers perished in two
engagements fought the same day. Two of Harold’s sons
retired to Denmark ; their sister, who accompanied them, was
afterwards married to the sovereign of Russia.

In July arrived the threatened expedition from Denmark.
Sveno, who spent two years in making preparations, had sum-
moned to his standard adventurers from every nation inhabiting
the shores of the Baltic ; and had intrusted the command of
a fleet of two hundred and forty sail to the care of his eldest
son Canute, aided by the counsels and experience of Sbern, his
uncle, and Christian, his bishop. The Normans claim the
praise of having repulsed the invaders at Dover, Sandwich,
Ipswich, and Norwich : perhaps the Danes only touched at
these places to inform the natives of their arrival, or to dis-
tract the attention of their enemy. In the beginning of August
they sailed to the Humber, where they were joined by Edgar,
Cospatric, Waltheof, Archil, and the five sons of Carl, with a
squadron of English ships. Archbishop Aldred died of grief
at the prospect of the evils which threatened his devoted
country. The Normans at York, to clear the ground in the
vicinity of their castles, set fire to the neighbouring houses ;
the flames were spread by the wind ; and in a conflagration
of three days the cathedral and a great part of the city
were reduced to ashes. During the confusion the Danes and
English arrived, and totally defeated the enemy, who had the
imprudence to leave their fortifications, and fight in the streets.
Three thousand Normans were slain. . . .

- The King was hunting in the forest of Dean when he received
the first news of this disaster. In the paroxysm of his passion
he swore by the splendour of the Almighty that not one
Northumbrian should escape his revenge. Acquainted with
the menaces of Sveno, he had made preparations adequate to
the danger; auxiliaries had been sought from every people
between the Rhine and the Tagus; and to secure their ser-
vices, besides a liberal allowance for the present, promises
had been added of future and more substantial rewards. It
was not the intention of the confederates to hazard an en-
gagement with so numerous and disciplined a force. As it
advanced, they separated. Waltheof remained for the defence

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

of York : Cospatric led his Northumbrians beyond the Tyne :
the Danes retired to their ships, and sailed to the coast of
Lindesey. . . .

At Pontefract William was detained for three weeks by the
swell of the river Are : a ford was at last discovered ; he
reached York, and ordered it to be carried by assault.

Though Waltheof defended the city with obstinacy ; though
he slew with his own hand several Normans, as they rushed
in through the gateway, he was compelled to abandon it to
the Conqueror, who immediately repaired the castles and
appointed garrisons for their defence. Still the natives flat-
tered themselves that the winter would compel him to return
into the south : to their disappointment, he sent for his crown
from Winchester, and during the Christmas kept his court with
the usual festivities at York.

Elated with victory, and unrestrained by the motives of
religion or the feelings of humanity, William on this occasion
devised and executed a system of revenge which has covered
his name with everlasting infamy. As his former attempts to
enforce obedience had failed, he now resolved to exterminate
the refractory natives, and to place a wilderness as a barrier
between his Normans and their implacable enemies. With
this view he led his retainers from York, dispersed them in
small divisions over the country, and gave them orders to
spare neither man nor beast, but to destroy the houses, corn,
implements of husbandry, and whatever might be useful or
necessary to the support of human life. The work of plunder,
slaughter, and conflagration commenced on the left bank of
the Ouse, and successively reached the Tees, the Were, and
the Tyne. The more distant inhabitants crossed over the last A D
river; the citizens of Durham, mindful of the fate of Cumin, 1069
did not believe themselves safe till they were settled in Holy
Island, the property of their bishop. But thousands, whose
flight was intercepted, concealed themselves in the forests, or
made their way to the mountains, where they perished by
hunger or disease. The number of men, women, and chil-
dren who fell victims to this barbarous policy is said to have
exceeded one hundred thousand. For nine years not a
patch of cultivated ground could be seen between York and

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Durham ; and at the distance of a century eye-witnesses assure
us that the country was strewed with ruins, the extent and
number of which still attested the sanguinary ambition and
implacable resentment of the Conqueror.

The English chieftains, terrified by this severe infliction,
abandoned the contest. Edgar, with the Bishop of Durham,
and his principal associates, sailed from Weremouth to Scot-
land ; Cospatric by messengers solicited and obtained his
pardon and his earldom ; Waltheof, who by his valour had
excited the admiration and merited the esteem of the Nor-
mans, visited the King on the banks of the Tees, received
from him the hand of his niece Judith in marriage, and
recovered his former honours, the earldoms of Northampton
and Huntingdon. From the Tees William, on what account
we are not informed, returned by a road which had never
been trodden by an armed force. It was in the heart of
winter : a deep snow covered the ground ; and the rivers,
mountains, and ravines continually presented new and unex-
pected obstacles. In the general confusion, order and disci-
pline disappeared ; even the King himself wandered from the
track, and passed an anxious night in total ignorance both
where he was himself, and what direction the army had
taken. After surmounting numerous difficulties, and suffering
the severest privations, the men reached York ; but most of
the horses had perished in the snow.

This adventure might have checked the ardour of a less
resolute leader; but the Conqueror possessed a sovereign
contempt of hardships,, and within a few weeks undertook
a longer and more perilous expedition. In the beginning of
March, amid storms of snow, sleet, and hail, he led his army
from York to Chester, over the mountains which divided
the two coasts of the island. The foreign mercenaries began
to murmur; by degrees they burst into open mutiny, and
clamorously demanded their discharge. “ Let them go, if
they please,” answered the King, with apparent indifference ;
“I do not want their services.” At the head of the army,
and frequently on foot, he gave the example to his followers,
who blushed not to equal the exertions and alacrity of their
prince. At Chester he built a castle, pacified the country, and

HERE WARD AND WA L THE OF.

received Edric the Wild into favour.1 Thence he proceeded a.d.
to Salisbury, where he rewarded and disbanded the army. ^
The only punishment inflicted on the mutineers was, that they
were compelled to serve forty days longer than their fellows. . . .

William was now (1070) undisputed master of England. 1070
From the Channel to the borders of Scotland his authority
was universally acknowledged in every county : with the
exception of Cospatric’s government, it was enforced by the
presence of a powerful body of troops. In each populous
burgh a strong fortress had been erected : in case of insurrec-
tion the Normans found an asylum within its walls ; and the
same place confined the principal natives of the district, as
hostages for the obedience of their countrymen. . . .

But in 1071 the embers of civil war were again rekindled 1071
by the jealousy of William. During the late disturbance
Edwin and Morcar had cautiously abstained from any com-
munication with the insurgents. But if their conduct was
unexceptionable, their influence was judged dangerous. In
them the natives beheld the present hope, and the future
liberators, of their country ; and the King judged it expedient
to allay his own apprehensions by securing their persons.

The attempt was made in vain. Edwin concealed himself;
solicited aid from the friends of his family ; and, eluding the
vigilance of the Normans, endeavoured to escape towards the
borders of Scotland. Unfortunately, the secret of his route
was betrayed by three of his vassals : the temporary swell of a
rivulet from the influx of the tide intercepted his flight, and
he fell, with twenty of his faithful adherents, fighting against
his pursuers. The traitors presented his head to William, who
rewarded their services with a sentence of perpetual banish-
ment. The fate of his brother Morcar was different. He
fled to the protection of Hereward, who had presumed to
rear the banner of independence amidst the fens and morasses
of Cambridgeshire.

The memory of Hereward was long dear to the people
of England. The recital of his exploits gratified their vanity

1 Sometimes called Edric the Forester. He was lord of lands on the
Severn and Wye, and had at first submitted to William, but was provoked
into insurrection by the insolence of the Norman nobles. — C. M. Y.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

and resentment ; and traditionary songs transmitted his fame
to succeeding generations. His father, the lord of Born in
Lincolnshire, unable to restrain the turbulence of his temper; t
had obtained an order for his banishment from Edward the
Confessor ; and the exile had earned in foreign countries the
praise of a hardy and fearless warrior. He was in Flanders
at the period of the Conquest ; but when he heard that his
father was dead, and that his mother had been dispossessed
of the lordship of Born by a foreigner, he returned in haste,
collected the vassals of the family, and drove the Norman
from his paternal estates. The fame of the exploit increased
the number of his followers ; every man anxious to avenge
his own wrongs, or the wrongs of his country, hastened to
the standard of Here ward ; a fortress of wood was erected ;
in the Isle of Ely for the protection of their treasures ; and
a small band of outlaws, instigated by revenge, and em- j
boldened by despair, set at defiance the whole power of
the Conqueror.

Hereward, with several of his followers, had received the ■
sword of knighthood from his uncle Brand, abbot of Peter- i
borough. Brand died before the close of the year 1069 ; and
William gave the abbey to Turold, a foreign monk, who, with ;■
a guard of one hundred and sixty horsemen, proceeded to take :
possession. He had already reached Stamford, when Here- !<
ward resolved to plunder the monastery. The Danes, who
had passed the winter in the Humber, were now in the Wash ; ♦
and Sbern, their leader, consented to join the outlaws. The
town of Peterborough was burnt ; the monks were dispersed ;
the treasures which they had concealed were discovered, and ;
the abbey was given to the flames. Hereward retired to his |
asylum. Sbern sailed towards Denmark.

To remove these importunate enemies, Turold purchased <
the services of Ivo Tailbois, to whom the Conqueror had given
the district of Hoyland. Confident of success, the Abbot and
the Norman commenced the expedition with a numerous body (
of cavalry. But nothing could elude the vigilance of Hereward.
As Tailbois entered one side of a thick wood, the chieftain .
issued from the other, darted unexpectedly upon Turold, and *
carried him off with several other Normans, whom he confined

HERE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

in damp and unwholesome dungeons, till the sum of two
thousand pounds had been paid for their ransom.

For a while the pride of William disdained to notice the
efforts of Hereward ; but when Morcar and most of the exiles
from Scotland had joined that chieftain, prudence compelled
him to crush the hydra before it could grow to maturity. He
stationed his fleet in the Wash, with orders to observe every
outlet from the fens to the ocean ; by land he distributed his
forces in such manner as to render escape almost impossible.
Still the great difficulty remained to reach the enemy, who had
retired to their fortress, situated in an expanse of water which
in the narrowest part was more than two miles in breadth.
The King undertook to construct a solid road across the
marshes, and to throw bridges over the channels of the rivers,
a work of considerable labour and of equal danger, in the face
of a vigilant and enterprising enemy. Hereward frequently
dispersed the workmen ; and his attacks were so sudden, so
incessant, and so destructive, that the Normans attributed his
success to the assistance of Satan. At the instigation of
Tailbois, William had the weakness to employ a sorceress, who
was expected, by the superior efficacy of her spells, to defeat
those of the English magicians. She was placed in a wooden
| turret at the head of the work ; but Hereward, who had
■ watched his opportunity, set fire to the dry reeds in the
•neighbourhood ; the wind rapidly spread the conflagration,
and the enchantress with her gourds, the turret with the
workmen, were enveloped and consumed in the flames.

These checks might irritate the King ; they could not divert
him from his purpose. In defiance of every obstacle, the work
| advanced: it was evident that in a few days the Normans
dvould be in possession of the island, and the greater part of
the outlaws voluntarily submitted to the royal mercy. Their
fate was different. Of some he accepted the ransom ; a few
[suffered death ; many lost an eye, a hand, or a foot ; and
several, among whom were Morcar and the Bishop of Durham,
vere condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Hereward alone
:ould not brook the idea of submission. He escaped across
he marshes, concealed himself in the woods, and as soon as
he royal army had retired, resumed hostilities against the

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

a.d. enemy. But the King, who had learnt to respect his valour, |
was not adverse to a reconciliation. The chieftain took the 1
oath of allegiance, and was permitted to enjoy in peace the J
patrimony of his ancestors.

1072 William was now at leisure to chastise the presumption of
Malcolm (King of Scotland),1 who had not only afforded anil
asylum to his enemies, but had seized every opportunity to
enter the northern counties, exciting the natives to rebellion, I
and ravaging the lands of those who refused. . . .

In his return he halted at Durham, . . . and summoned before jfl
his tribunal Cospatric, the earl of Northumberland. He was1
charged with old offences, which it was supposed had been )
long ago forgiven, the massacres of the Normans at Durham
and York. Banished by the sentence of the court, Cospatric !
retired, after several adventures, to Malcolm, and received
from the pity or policy of that prince the castles and demesnes ;
of Dunbar. His earldom was bestowed on Waltheof. . . .

Hereward was the last Englishman who had drawn the
sword in the cause of independence. The natives submitted
to the yoke in sullen despair ; even Edgar the EthelingJ
resigned the hope of revenge, and consented to solicit a liveli- 1
hood from the mercy of the man whose ambition had robbed i
him of a crown. He was still in Scotland, when the King of ]
France offered him a princely establishment at Montreuii, near I
the borders of Normandy; not that Philip cared for the ]
misfortunes of the Etheling, but that he sought to annoy 4
William, who had become his rival both in power and dignity.!

£°75 Edgar put to sea with the wealth which he had brought from
England, and the presents which had been made to him by
the King, Queen, and nobles of Scotland. But his small
squadron was dispersed by a tempest, his ships were stranded i
on the coast, his treasures and some of his followers were 1
seized by the inhabitants, and the unfortunate Prince returned I
to solicit once more the protection of his brother-in-law. By j
him he was advised to seek a reconciliation with William, who!
received the overture with pleasure. At Durham the sheriff of i
Yorkshire met him with a numerous escort, in appearance to

1 This is from a Norman point of view. In the eyes of the West Saxon s
royal family William could be nothing but an usurper. — C. M. Y.

HE RE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

do him honour, in reality to secure his person. Under this
guard he traversed England, crossed the sea, and was presented
to William in Normandy, who granted him the first place at
court, an apartment in the palace, and a yearly pension of
three hundred and sixty-five pounds of silver. For several years
the last male descendant of Cerdic confined his ambition
to the sports of the field; in 1086 he obtained permission to
conduct two hundred knights to Apulia, and from Apulia to
the Holy Land.1

After the surrender of Morcar, William had led an army into
Normandy to support his interests in the province of Maine. 1
His absence encouraged the malcontents in England to unfurl
the banner of insurrection. But the rebels were no longer
natives ; they were Normans, dissatisfied with the rewards
which they had received, and offended by the haughty and
overbearing carriage of the King. At their head were Roger
Fitz-Osbern, who had succeeded his father in the earldom of
Hereford, and Ralph de Guader, a noble Breton, earl of Nor-
folk. The latter, in defiance of the royal prohibition, had
married the sister of the former; and the two earls, aware of
William’s vengeance, resolved to anticipate the danger. It
was their object to prevent his return to England ; to partition
the kingdom into the three great divisions of Wessex, Mercia,
and Northumbria ; to take two of these for themselves, and
to give the third to Waltheof, whose accession to the con-
federacy would, they expected, secure the co-operation of the
natives. Waltheof refused to engage in the enterprise, but
imprudently suffered himself to be sworn to secrecy. The plan
of the conspirators was soon discovered to William de War-
renne and Richard de Bienfait, the grand justiciaries ; in a
battle at Bicham, in Norfolk, the rebels were defeated, and
every prisoner made in the pursuit was punished with the loss
of his right foot. The victors besieged Guader in the castle of
Norwich during three months ; at length, despairing of succour,
he consented to quit the kingdom with his followers within
a certain period ; and after visiting Denmark, returned to his
patrimonial estates in Bretagne.

1 During the reign of William Rufus Edgar was permitted to return to
England, and obtained a distinguished place in the court. — C. M. Y.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

William had now returned from Normandy, and summoned
a council of his barons at London. In this court Guader
was outlawed, Fitz-Osbern was convicted of treason, and sen-
tenced, according to the Norman code, to perpetual impri-
sonment and the loss of his property. His father’s services
indeed pleaded forcibly in his favour, but his proud and
ungovernable temper disdained to ask for mercy. Waltheof
was next arraigned. His secret had been betrayed by the
perfidy of Judith, who had fixed her affections on a Norman
nobleman, and was anxious to emancipate herself from her
English husband. By the Anglo-Saxon law treason was punished
with death and forfeiture ; but the guilt of Waltheof was rather
of that species which has since been denominated misprision
of treason. He had been acquainted with the conspiracy, and
had not as a faithful vassal disclosed it to his sovereign. His
judges were divided in opinion, and the unfortunate earl
continued during the year a close prisoner in the castle of
Winchester. Archbishop Lanfranc laboured to procure his
release, but the intrigues of his wife, and of the nobleman who
A.D. bought his estates, defeated the efforts of the primate. Waltheof
1076 was condemned to die, and executed at an early hour the
next morning, before the citizens could be apprised of his in-
tended fate. By the natives his death was sincerely deplored.
They deemed him the victim of Norman injustice, and revered
his memory as that of a martyr.

The reader will be pleased to learn that the perfidy of
Judith experienced a suitable retribution. William ordered
her to marry a foreign nobleman named Simon, but she
refused to give her hand to a husband that was deformed. The
King knew how to punish her disobedience. Simon married
the eldest daughter of Waltheof, and received the estates of her
father ; Judith was left to languish in poverty, unpitied by the
English or the Normans, and the object of general hatred or
contempt. . . .

The character of William the Conqueror has been drawn
with apparent impartiality in the Saxon Chronicle, by Eadmer,
a contemporary and an Englishman : —

“ If any one wish to know what manner of man he was, or t
what worship he had, or of how many lands he were the lord,

HE RE WARD AND WALTHEOF.

we will describe him as we have known him ; for we looked
on him, and some while lived in his herd. King William was
a very wise man, and very rich, more worshipful and strong
than any of his foregangers. He was mild to good men who
loved God ; and stark beyond all bounds to those, who with-
said his will. On the very stede, where God gave him to win
England, he reared a noble monastery, and set monks therein,
and endowed it well. He was very worshipful. Thrice he
bore his king-helmet1 every year when he was in England ;
at Easter he bore it at Winchester, at Pentecost at West-
minster, and in mid-winter at Gloucester. And there were
with him all the rich men over all England ; archbishops
and diocesan bishops, abbots and earls, thanes and knights.
Moreover he was a very stark man, and very savage, so that
no man durst do anything against his will. He had earls in
his bonds, who had done against his will ; bishpps he set off
their bishoprics, abbots off their abbotries, and thanes in
prisons ; and at last he did not spare his own brother Odo.
Him he set in prison. Yet, among other things, we must not
forget the good frith 2 which he made in this land, so that a
man that was good for aught might travel over the kingdom
with his bosom full of gold without molestation ; and no man
durst slay another man, though he had suffered never so
mickle evil from the other. He ruled over England, and by
his cunning he was so thoroughly acquainted with it, that
there is not a hide of land of which he did not know, both
who had it and what was its worth, and that he set down in
his writings. Wales was under his weald, and therein he
wrought castles ; and he wielded the Isle of Man withal.
Moreover he subdued Scotland by his mickle strength. Nor-
mandy was his by kinn, and over the earldom called Manns
he ruled; and if he might have lived yet two years, he would
have won Ireland by the fame of his power, and without any
armament. Yet truly in his time men had mickle suffering,
and very many hardships. Castles he caused to be wrought,
and poor men to be oppressed. He was so very stark. He

1 His crown. The kings wore their crowns in public at the great festivals.
— C. M. Y.

2 Frith is the king’s peace or protection, the violation of which subjected
the offender to a heavy fine.

m <

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many hundred
pounds of silver, and that he took, some by right and some by
mickle might, for very little need. He had fallen into avarice,
and greediness he loved withal. . . . He let his lands to tine as I
dear as he could; then came some other and bade more than }
the first had given, and the King let it to him who bade
more ; then came a third, and bid yet more, and the King let
it into the hands of the man who bade the most. Nor did he jj
reck how sinfully his reeves got money of poor men, or how
many unlawful things they did. For the more men talked of
right law, the more they did against the law. . . . He also set J
many deer-friths,1 and he made laws therewith, that whosoever f
should slay hart or hind, him man should blind. As he for-
bade the slaying of harts, so also did he of boars. So much
he loved the high deer, as if he had been their father. He
also decreed about hares, that they should go free. His rich
men moaned and the poor men murmured, but he was so hard |
that he recked not the hatred of them all ; for it was need f
they should follow the King’s will withal, if they wished to
live, or to have lands, or goods, or his favour. Alas ! that
any man should be so moody, and should so puff up himself,
and think himself above all other men. May Almighty God
have mercy on his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his
sins ! ”2

FEUDALISM.

( E>om “ History of England during the Early and Middle Agesf by
Charles H. Pearson, M.A.)

The origin of feudalism is as difficult to trace as the source of
the Niger. The relation of chief and clansman among bar-
barians, the oath of Roman soldiers to the Emperor, the civic

1 Deer- friths were forests in which the deer were under the king’s protec-
tion or frith.

2 Abridged from vol. ii. chapter i.

FEUDALISM.

responsibility of a father for his children, transferred to a lord
| for his dependents, are all elements in the system which over-
spread Europe in the Middle Ages. Men in those times com-
monly regarded it from the practical point of view, as service
for reward. But it came to have a higher meaning to the
State. The feudal baron was the representative of kingship on
his domain ; rendering justice, maintaining police, and seeing
j that military service was performed. As a viceroy, he was
accountable for the just performance of these duties to the
crown : above all, he was a link in the great chain that bound
the lowest peasant and the successors of Charlemagne together.
Roman imperialism had divided the world into master and
slave. The juster theory of the Middle Ages, no doubt influ-
enced by Christianity, regarded mankind as a great family,
and sought to strengthen the bonds of union by engagements
taken solemnly before man and God. The oath of homage
was the most binding that could be taken ; the love of a father
to his son, the duty of a wife to her husband, were regarded as
of less force.

“ Homage,” in the beautiful language of Littleton, “ is the
most honourable service, and most humble service of reverence
that a frank tenant may do to his lord. For, when the tenant
shall make homage to his lord, he shall be ungirt, and his head
uncovered, and his lord shall sit, and the tenant shall kneel
before him on both his knees, and hold his hands jointly to-
gether between the hands of his lord, and shall say thus : ‘ I
become your man from this day forward, of life and limb, and
of earthly worship, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and
bear to you faith for the tenements (M.N.) that I claim to hold
of you ; saving the faith that I owe unto our sovereign lord the
king and then the lord so sitting shall kiss him.” In order to
avoid mistake, the tenements for which homage was paid were
enumerated. The whole ceremony was performed before
witnesses, and was a record of the lord’s title-deeds. . . . Where
a fief was held by a married woman, her husband took her place
towards the lord. But the exception in favour of single women
was inconvenient ; and in later times a modified form of oath
was introduced, in which all mention of personal duty was
omitted. Again, bishops elect did homage for their baronies*

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

but, after consecration, they only took the oath of fealty. The
clerical oath of homage (like that of the women) omitted the
words “ I become your man/’ on the ground that the priest had
professed himself to be only the man of God. Lastly, homage
was restricted to the holders of estates which they could
bequeath to their heirs generally, or the heirs of their body.

The distinction of homage and fealty is important. Fealty
was more sacred, because confirmed with an oath ; less digni
tied, as it could be done by attorney ; more general, as it
extended to all freeholders and villeins ; less personal, as it did
not include the obligation to become the lord’s man ; and less
binding, as, unlike those who held by homage, the tenant by fealty
was not bound to sell or pledge everything for his lord’s ransom.
Hence, apparently, tenants for a term of life did fealty, but not
homage. . . . The difference between fealty and the allegiance
which every subject owed to the crown lay in the fact that
fealty was done in respect of a tenure, implied a direct benefit
enjoyed, and was legal evidence of the lord’s rights.

Homage and fealty being the relations of service, the vassal’s
condition was determined by the nature of his tenure. Every
tenure implied some service, either fixed, and then more or
less honourable ; or arbitrary, and so a mark of servitude.
The Church taking precedence of the State, tenure in frank
almoigne — that is, by the services of religion — came first.
This was the tenure of lands that were given without the
obligation of any secular service. The Churchmen endowed
were, however, bound to offer up prayers and masses for the
soul of their benefactor, and he or his heirs might distrain
on them if this duty were neglected.1 * * * Tenure by homage an-
cestral was merely tenantcy-in-chief by immemorial prescription
in the family. It carried with it the ordinary feudal burdens
to the tenant; but, in return, his lord was bound to warrant
him the possession of his estate. Tenure by grand serjeantry
implied the perfonnance of some personal service to the King,

1 The Templars5 lands were claimed by the heirs of the original donors

as escheats when the order was dissolved. So, too, a very just claim was

set up at the dissolution of monasteries, that lands granted in frank almoigne

should revert to the families of their original donors, since the services for

which they were given could no longer be rendered.

FEUDALISM.

to be his chamberlain or champion. Tenure by petty ser-
jeantry was the yearly payment of some implement of war to
the King. These were the tenures of tenants-in-chief ; belowT
them, scutage and socage tenures. The term scutage is now
commonly used of the tax for which service of the shield was
commuted. Originally, it meant the obligation to serve in
arms forty days in the year, and was attached to every knight’s
fee. Fealty, with or without homage, and scutage, together
made up knight’s service. Fealty, with or without homage,
and any other special service, below petty serjeantry, consti-
tuted the important class of socage tenures. The obligation
to perform all services indiscriminately was villenage. In
other words, the distinction between gentry and mere freedom
lay in the service of arms ; between freedom and servitude, in
fixed instead of variable dues. The distinctions of socage
tenure are numerous, as the word came to cover the service of
the plough, rent for houses paid immediately to the crown
(burgage tenure), or rent by various tenures, even one so
debasing as doing the hangman’s duty. Sometimes two or
three conditions were united ; it did not matter, so long as
they were not variable. Beneath these middle classes came
the large class of villeins. A villein might be regardant , at-
tached to the soil ; or in gross , attached to the person of his
lord. A freeman might hold land in villenage, and be bound
to do villein’s service upon it. One of the things that most
complicates the consideration of feudal England is the way in
which a personality attached to corporations and lands. Every
acre of soil, every institution, was animate, so to speak, with
duties and privileges, which had attached to it from time
immemorial, and could not be lost.

The obligations of a feudal vassal were service in council, in
the court of law, and in the field. . . . He was bound to sustain
his lord in self-defence and to guard his castle during a cer-
tain number of days. . . . He was forced to contribute to re-
deem his lord from captivity, or when his lord’s eldest daughter
was married, or when the eldest son became knight. These
reliefs, as they were called, were at first arbitrary and oppres-
sive. Gradually they were fixed, by custom, at the rate of
five pounds for the knight’s fee of land, or four hides *. this

ms TOXICAL SELECTIONS.

was “ the reasonable relief” that is mentioned in Magna
Charta. ... In the case of tenants-in-chief, their heiresses
were royal wards, whom the King might marry at pleasure.
The abuse of this prerogative by monarchs, who gave the
daughters of noblemen to unworthy favourites, was a grave
grievance, of which the barons constantly complained, but
which was never effectually redressed. The vassal could not
transmit his inheritance to a leper. He lost life and land if he
fled from his lord in battle through cowardice, and even his
freehold escheated to the crown. Generally he forfeited his
fief if he did not perform its duties, or if he made any attempt
on the person or honour of his lord and his family. But these
obligations were reciprocal. The lord was not even allowed
to raise a stick upon his vassal. Insult, outrage, or the denial
of aid or justice, entitled the vassal to withdraw his fief and
declare war upon his superior, though it was at his peril in
England if he violated the King’s peace. In cases that did not
come to this extremity, the vassal might appeal to a court of his
peers, presided over, it is true, by his lord ; but a further appeal
lay from this to the suzerain. That injustice was often done is
probable. But the institutions of these times are not charge-
able with unfairness in their spirit. The great curse of the
country was its over-legality, and the belief that it could root
out abuses by multiplying systems and laws. . . .

The universality with which the principles of feudalism
were applied can scarcely be exaggerated. In the ordinary
life of society, the knight was invested with his order as with
a fief, and the woman bound to her husband by a promise
resembling the oath of homage. In religion, the great question
at issue between Church and State was conceived under feudal
aspects, and men debated whether Pope and Emperor were alike
supreme in their own demesne, but each owing service to the
other for some fief held of him ; or one subject to the other ; or
both independent powers, holding only of Christ, their suzerain.
In law, the theory that a monarchy was a fief, and the adminis-
tration of justice one of its appurtenances, has stamped itself
upon English legislation. In itself, it was no small change
that the monarch should be called King of England instead of
King of the Angles : it substituted the notion of proprietorship

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST. 85

for that of headship of a clan. That peculiar feature of these
ages which led them to express their abstract ideas in rigid
symbols, to materialize and petrify what would otherwise have
been fleeting and vague, contributed to invest legal fictions
with an intense reality. Hence it was that the English towns,
as soon as they became free and corporate, were treated as
barons. Each of them was an organic life, so to speak, with
many members but only one will, and with the responsibilities
of an individual. The governing powers of a corporation, its
mayor, aldermen, and common council, were the lord of the
citizens. Naturally, therefore, they were held responsible for the
actions of any one of their body. The cost of a criminal’ s offences
was assessed on his fellow-citizens, and the debt owed by a single
man to the exchequer might be recovered from his township :
the act of a deputation was binding on those from whom it
came. In these few facts lies the whole representative theory.
Once grant that a city can be conceived as a person, and the
great democratic problem of expressing every individual will
is solved.1

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

{From ee History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,” by
Charles H. Pearson, M.A.)

In the year a.d. 1085 William was alarmed by the news of a
joint invasion from Denmark and Flanders. An army was
hastily brought over from Normandy, and quartered throughout
England : the numbers were greater than had ever landed
before : perhaps the King apprehended rebellion. In a few
months the danger had passed away ; Knut was detained by
contrary winds, and the treason of his captains, so that
William was able to dismiss a portion of his force. But as it
was not to be endured that such a kingdom as England should
lie at the mercy of any foreign foe, the King determined in

1 Vol. i. chapter xxxiv.

A. D.

1085

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

council on a new military organization, which should enable
him to collect an army at a moment’s notice. As land was
the basis of all calculations of this sort, commissioners were
appointed for different counties to make a census of popula-
tion and property. Their method of procedure was to summon
before them the sheriffs, the lords of manors, the parish
priests, the hundred-reeves, the bailiffs, and six villeins out of
every hamlet. These men stated on oath what amount of
land there was in the district, whether it was wood, meadow,
or pasture, what was its value, what services were due from its
owners ; and generally the numbers of free and bond on the
estate. In some instances, other particulars were inserted,
such as the number of live stock ; which the transcribers
struck out or retained without any fixed rule, in the summary
made for the crown. The English, unaccustomed to a census,
murmured at the prospect of more accurate taxation, and
their chroniclers thought it “ shameful to tell ” what “ the
King had thought it no shame to do.” Yet the accurate defi-
nitions of land in Anglo-Saxon charters must have familiarized
the people with these inquiries on a small scale ; and the
registries of the county courts and the old conveyances of pro-
perty, in which husbandmen and live stock were sometimes
enumerated, were perhaps part of the evidence which came
before the commissioners. The mere existence of hundreds
and tithings is further proof that the people did not live with-
out boundaries or legal divisions before their conquest by
William. The idea of Domesday Book, if it had any pre-
cedent, was probably derived from the customs of England
rather than from those of Normandy. But its true cause lies
in the necessities of a new government and of difficult times.
It served for centuries as the basis of all taxation, and the
authority by which all disputes about landed tenures and
customs were decided. . . .

In estimating the population of England, it must be borne
in mind that “ Domesday Book ” is not an exhaustive statement.
The three northern counties, and parts of Westmoreland, Lan-
cashire, and Monmouthshire, were not included in the survey.
The North was still desolate, and scarcely conquered ; Mon-
mouthshire was Welsh. This omission is unimportant, as it

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

would be easy to calculate averages for these districts. But
there are other incompletenesses. London and Winchester,
and some smaller places, such as Devizes and Marlborough,
are not mentioned at all ; Bristol, which possessed a large
trade, is, for some unknown reason, almost passed over; and
abbeys, castles, and their respective liberties, are sometimes
either unnoticed or imperfectly described. The reason of these
omissions is unknown; in some cases, perhaps, a separate
record was made, but has been lost ; in one instance we are
told that the commissioners favoured a monastery by rating
its possessions below their value. Although there were more
than four thousand churches in England at this period, less
than sixteen hundred ecclesiastics are enumerated, and out of
these only one thousand are entered as parish priests. These
deductions from the completeness of the returns are the more
important, because it is probable they affect chiefly the middle
classes — that is, the men who, like priests and citizens in towns,
had no necessary connexion with land as the owners of freehold
property, or as bound down to the soil. The population
actually given is 283,342 : this, of course, consists only of
able-bodied men, and multiplied by five would give an actual
population of about 1,400,000. Allowing for all omissions,
we may probably place it at rather over than under 1,800,000 ;
a number which may seem small, but which was not doubled
till the reign of Charles II., six hundred years later. . . .

The largest class was the semi-servile. Of these, villeins and
borders, or cottiers, make up the mass, about 200,000 in all.
They were bond upon bond-land; that is to say, their land
owed a certain tribute to its owner, and they owed certain
services to the land : they could not quit it without permission
from their lord. But they were not mere property ; they could
not be sold off the soil into service of a different kind, like the
few slaves who still remained in England, and who numbered
roughly about 25,000.

The large number of the middle classes, and the small
number of slaves, are points in this estimate that deserve con-
sideration. It is clear that the Conquest did not introduce
any new refinement in servitude. In a matter where we have
no certain data, all statements must be made guardedly ; but

HIS T ORICA L SELECTIONS .

the language of chroniclers and laws, and the probabilities of
what would result from the anarchy and war that had so long
desolated England under its native kings, induce a belief that
the Conquest was a gain to all classes, except the highest, in
matters of freedom. ... In Essex the number of freemen
positively increased, and the change may probably be ascribed
to the growing wool-trade with Flanders, as we find sheep
multiplying on the great estates, and with the change from ;
arable to pasture land fewer labourers would be required. . . .
The great English nobles were the least fortunate among the
conquered people. We do not know under what pleas they
were severally dispossessed, but in all ascertained cases the
pretence was rebellion or conspiracy, and the only doubtful
instance is Waltheof: Brihtric, who had large possessions in
Gloucestershire, was said to have incurred the Queen’s dis-
pleasure by refusing her hand before she married William,
and it is certain that his estates were transferred to her ; but it
is impossible to suppose that Matilda’s wounded vanity was
put forward as a plea for dispossession. The mother of Edwin
and Morcar seems never to have been disturbed, and their
sister Lucia became so wealthy by inheritances that she was
married to three husbands successively. A few men of mixed
lineage or unambitious temperament, like Sweyn of Essex,
Eldred of Somersetshire, and Aluric of Hampshire and Wilt-
shire, retained their patrimonial estates through all the vicis-
situdes of invasion and civil war. But, generally, Normans
of the second rank and adventurers from Flanders and France
were substituted for the old nobility. The great barons of the
duchy seem mostly to have preferred their own country, and it
was William’s policy to advance especially his kinsmen and
new men.

The towns shared the misfortunes, as they had aided the
struggles, of the nobles. Some had stood a siege ; in others
houses were thrown down that a castle might be erected ; and
in all — however wasted — the old rent was continued, and, if
possible, raised. In Shrewsbury, where one hundred and .
eighty houses had been destroyed, or exempted, or transferred
from the common taxation, the remaining two hundred and
fifty-two had to pay the same rent as in King Edward’s time.

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST. 89

In Warwick the rent of 89/. 8s. paid under the Confessor was
more than doubled under the Normans. . . .

Naturally the inland towns were unable under this system to
repair the ravages of war, although Frenchmen were encouraged
to settle in them by the gift of tenements rent free. But the
towns on the sea-coast, Chichester, Pevensey, Sandwich, and
Dunwich, profited by the large Continental trade, and increased
in population and in wealth. Dover was rebuilt, and appears
as a place of importance. . . . Besides the ravages of war, the
English seem to have suffered during part of the reign from bad
seasons, and from what the chronicles call wild-fire in the towns.
Many cities are said to have been destroyed, and we know
that in Lincoln more than eighty houses were consumed. But
the importance of the English cities must not be exaggerated.
Of London, Bristol, and Winchester, as they have no mention
in the survey, and were probably, from their importance,
allowed to compound, we can make no definite statement
But we know that York, under the Confessor, had only about
eighteen hundred houses, and Norwich only one thousand three
hundred and twenty burgesses. Even if we assume that houses
in towns were more thickly inhabited than in the country (and
this can only be true in a few cases), it is evident that from
seven to ten thousand would be the population of a first-class
town.

The country at large had not suffered like the towns, and
; the losses actually sustained had been more easily repaired
I under good government. In fact, as farm-buildings were mostly
| of wood, and orchards and gardens were few and far between,
the ravages of war were chiefly felt in the lawless consumption
of flocks and herds, and in the killing or driving away of
labourers. At times when there was no free-labour market it
was certain ruin to a small proprietor if he was deprived of the
serfs attached to his land. . . .

The proportions in which the land was divided are very
remarkable. Roughly, we may say that the Crown held ten
[parts to fifteen owned by the Church, and twenty-five by the
baronage ; or the Crown a fifth, the Church three-tenths, and
the barons about half. . . . First in wealth among the baronage
came the princes of the blood, like Eude of Bayeux, whose

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

manors returned a rental of 3,384/., and Robert of Mortaine,
who received nearly 2,000/ Next in importance are the great
prelates, the lands of the see of Canterbury alone bringing in
nearly 1,500/ a year. It is a great descent to the mere nobles,
men like William de Braiose, Eudo Dapifer, or Sweyn of Essex,
whose estates only brought in from 500/ to 300/ a year. . . .3
From five to twenty pounds a year was no uncommon income
for a gentleman ; multiplied by twenty, to compare with pre-
sent values, this would still represent a competence for a small
squire in parts of the Continent. . . .

The first result of the Domesday Survey was, that much,
lawless aggression of the Normans was undone, and property
reverted to its original owners. This was not always submitted
to without feuds and bloodshed ; and a few of the barons, :
indignant at their treatment, emigrated with their followers
into Scotland, and contributed to people the Lowlands with a
mixed race as in England. The great bulk of the tenants-in-
chief who acquiesced, however unwillingly, in the new settle-
ment, renewed their oaths of homage to William in a great
meeting at Salisbury (August, a.d. 1086). From this day :
forward Domesday Book was the record and voucher of titles
throughout England. Without parallel, as without precedent,
in the history of civilized nations, it has no doubt exercised
a silent influence over our constitutional progress, by the
character of permanency it impressed upon all property and
tenures. Before long, men’s minds were so penetrated with
the customs of their country, that heaven itself was regarded
as a feudal sovereignty.

While the State was being re-modelled, the Church could
not expect to remain untouched, and the English clergy had
done their best to cherish the national feeling and rouse
rebellion. But it was not easy to meddle with a corporation
whose chief was the head of Christendom ; and had the Eng-
lish Church been more loyal to the Pope, or more canonical, it
would probably have escaped with comparative impunity. As
it was, it gained in property by the changes made around it ;
the devotion of the conquerors frequently sought to expiate the
violences of a soldier’s life by the endowment or foundation of
monasteries. But these were slight compensation for the loss

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

of office, and for changes in the liturgical habits, so to speak,
of English Churchmen. On the final deprivation of Stigand,
who had shown himself incapable of trust, and was doomed to
honourable but lifelong imprisonment, the illustrious Lanfranc,
prior of Caen, was appointed his successor.

Lanfranc is one of those great Italians who have moulded
the character of the times in which they lived. . . . He had the
contempt of a civilized Italian and a Norman conqueror for
“ the barbarous people ” among whom he was made primate.
He stood manfully by the privileges of his see, maintaining
the rights of Canterbury over York, and reclaiming the manors
taken from his diocese. But his hand was heavy upon the
English. He brought the native bishops to account for
the irregular habits which prescription had established and
excused ; one by one, as their delinquencies were proved, they
were dispossessed of their preferment, not without fair trial,
but mercilessly. . . .

Lanfranc himself seems to have bestowed his preferment
conscientiously. But William, in spite of his piety, was less
scrupulous, and repeatedly gave benefices to buy off old claims
on his bounty, or place power in the hands of trustworthy
partisans. Ignorant and vulgar men swarmed over from the
Continent to enjoy the Church plunder of England. . . .
Generally it was in the interests of a monastery that its head
should belong to the dominant caste, but there was the taint
of violence upon these appointments, and scrupulous men
shrunk from profiting by the favours of blood-stained and
disorderly conquerors. The venerable Guitmund, a monk
; without office in a petty Norman monastery, was summoned
1 across the seas to William’s court, and invited to take up his
residence there till a bishopric should fall vacant. Guitmund
answered that he was a sick man, perplexed with doubts and
sorrows of thought, and frailties of an infirm purpose ; but
were he fitter than he was to guide others, he would never
accept preferment of which the rightful owners had been
; forcibly dispossessed, or share in the spoils of blood. When
he thought of the crimes by which England had been won, he
trembled to touch it, with all its wealth, as though it glowed
with the fire of hell. Then, dilating into prophecy, he warned

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

the King and court of the just judgments of God which had
overtaken all the great spoilers of mankind, and would certainly
call the Normans one day to account. William, respecting
Guitmund’s sincerity, gave him an honourable passage back,
and offered him the archbishopric of Rouen on the next
vacancy. But the Norman clergy had heard with indignation
of the man who rebuked the sins by which his neighbours
profited. They urged that Guitmund was the son of a priest,
as a canonical reason , against his election. Guitmund did
not care to cause any heart-burnings for a mere matter of
personal advantage. He obtained his superior’s leave to
quit the country, and ended his days in Italy, as Bishop of
Aversa.

William’s policy to the Church, regarded as a distinct
society from the State, produced the most important results j
on the fortunes of his successors and of England. He slightly
strengthened the connexion with Rome, but deprived the
national clergy of half their powers. So far as the inter-
ference of legates was necessary to depose the English prelates
from their sees, William admitted it readily, and repaid the
Papal court by a more rigid enforcement of Peter’s pence.
But when Hildebrand was encouraged to demand fealty from
the King whose arms the Pope had blessed, William returned
a peremptory refusal ; none of his ancestors had done it, and
he would give up no old right. Hildebrand knew something
of the King, and allowed the question to drop. The English
clergy had hitherto been at once a part of the commonwealth
and a separate state by themselves. Their synods, although
sometimes attended by the King and nobles, had been virtually
free to prescribe their public policy as a body, or to draw up
laws for the regulation of daily life. They had wielded the
whole correctional police of the country ; and the bishop had
sate by the side of the ealdorman to dispense justice in the
scir-gemots.1 These powers — small, safe, and perhaps salu-
tary in barbarous times, when any means of enforcing law were
valuable — were dangerous when the relations of neighbouring
states had become more intricate, and when the popular sense
of right and wrong had begun to confound the secular notion
1 Scir-gemot, or assembly of the shire. — E. M. S.

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST

)f injury with the spiritual notion of sin. For the clergy to
fecide which Pope they should obey in case of a contested
| election might seriously embarrass public policy. William
leclared that the question of recognition lay with himself
The declaration did not settle the matter. The claim of
he Church was inadmissible, but it was logically just : so
ong as the clergy were a separate caste under a Pope, it
was for them to determine who was their head; otherwise
ihey were no independent body, but a branch of the public
;ervice. William’s edict was the preamble to Henry VIII. ’s
issertion of State supremacy : between the two lay more than
bur centuries of passionate discussion on the two rival
sovereignties. The enactment that the English Church,

[ issembled in council, might pass no laws or canons except
such as William had recommended or approved, was another
statesmanlike act, which created its own precedent. The
Church could prove from history that it had never been con-
;rolled in this function. But inasmuch as it claimed and exer-
cised the right to fine moral delinquents, to seclude them from
society and withdraw them from active service, when it entered
! n certain cases on the property of those who had infringed its
canonical laws, the State might well think itself justified in
imiting the extension of these powers. One point was so
mportant that it called for a separate enactment. A man
vhom the Church excommunicated was in strict theory an
lutcast from all society; his wife and children must shrink
bom him ; his household shared the sentence if they brought
him food ; no man might serve in arms with him. Clearly
hese powers, even if justly exercised, much more if wielded
iy a passionate or factious bishop, might cause irretrievable
[injury to the public service. William therefore ordained that
10 chief tenant of the crown, however great his sin, should
)e excommunicated in future, except by the King’s special
brecept. It was probably understood that the precept was not
o be refused — rather, that it was to be backed by the kingly
lower — in flagrant cases : our Norman sovereigns were not very
igid moralists, but they had a pecuniary interest in enforcing
Penalties.

[ We do not hear that the upright and courageous Churchman

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

I, an franc offered any opposition to these innovations ; though
he would probably have treated the first as a dead letter, if it
had ever stood in his way. But he must have felt the difficul-
ties of William’s position, and that the extension and clashing
of rival courts were injurious to the administration of justice;
that an inquisition and secular courts could not co-exist. As
a Churchman, he probably felt that his order suffered from
mixing in temporal matters. It may therefore have been as a j
matter of discipline that the bishops about this time withdrew
from the scir-gemots, and confined themselves to their own S
courts. But the fact that local privileges were degraded, and j
feudal powers raised, no doubt assisted the change. The
prelates did not care for a disputed rule in courts that were
almost contemptible. William’s general policy was to leave the
laws which he found in the country unaltered, and to content
himself with enforcing them stringently. . . . Though capable of \
savage excesses through passion or policy, he was not delibe-
rately cruel. In his earliest laws he forbade the infliction of f
capital punishment for trifling offences, on the ground that man,
made in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s blood, ought
not to be lightly slain. Later on, he abolished death as a
capital punishment, and substituted penalties of mutilation, in
order that the correction might be proportioned to the offence.

But the spirit of institutions may change while the letter
remains unaltered, and it made a great difference to the subject
people whether they were bound in a general way to keep order
among themselves, or were responsible for offences against the
peace to men who had a direct interest in pressing the penalties
of the law against them. Assassination was a common form
of English vengeance upon the lawless foreign soldiery. At
first, the murderers were accustomed to mutilate the body, that
it might not be recognised, in order to save their neighbours
from the “murdrum,” or fine of blood, which was heavier for a
Norman than for an Englishman. To prevent this evasion of
justice, the practice was introduced of considering every slain
man a Norman, unless proof of “ Englishry” were made by the
four nearest relatives of the deceased. With a similar object,
as no Saxon murderer would ever have been convicted on his
neighbour’s oath, the ordeal was instituted, in cases of felony,

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

for compensation. The famous curfew-bell, which was tolled
at sunset in sign that lights and fires were to be put out, was
a further expedient of police. The evening beer-clubs had
become dangerous as the rendezvous of conspirators.

But one of the worst aggravations of the Conquest lay in the
difference of language between Normans and Saxons. William,
indeed, had once set himself to learn English ; but the difficulties
of the task had been too great; and his barons could never
pronounce the names of the cities they stormed : they called
Lincoln Nichole, and York Eurwic. Gradually, indeed, a
kind of mixed dialect sprang up, something like the lingua
franca of the Levant, or the slang of Anglo-Indian society,
confounding the two vocabularies and disregarding grammati-
cal forms. But during William’s reign, when there were no
central courts, except the King’s council, and no trained
advocates, justice was administered by men unacquainted with
the vernacular, and Latin became the language of official use.
No doubt there was always a steward or clerk of the court,
who interpreted for the people, and with whom the real man-
agement of business lay. But it was not the less an evil to the
nation, that its laws, and their science, were treated in a foreign
idiom, and the assistance of professional men began to be
needed by those who sought justice.

The greatest change that the Conquest effected, and politi-
cally the most beneficial, was the practical substitution of
small administrative units, such as the “ shire,” for the large
national divisions of provinces. It is true that the name
“ shire ” was at least as old in England as Ine’s time, and that
Northumbria and Mercia are still spoken of for many years in
the chronicles. But, practically, the earls of Ethelred’s time
had presided over several counties together, while it is rare,
after the first years of the Conquest, to meet with more than
one in the same hands. Our kings were jealous of over-grown
principalities. Separated by the great fen district, and by the
almost unbroken forests which stretched from the banks of the
Mersey and Ribble through Derbyshire to Sherborne, Angle
and Saxon had grown up practically as distinct as Englishman
and Scotchman before the Union, with different dialects and
laws, under various feudal relations, with traditions of different

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

dynasties and of almost unbroken hostilities, and with no-
bilities of so distinct origin that Tostig is, perhaps, the first
Southerner who was nominated for an earlship north of Mercia.
But after the desolation of Yorkshire a new population grew jj
up, recruited from all quarters; Frenchmen and. Flemings
settled in the towns ; Cumberland was colonized with Saxons
from the south by William Rufus’s policy; and we know that
the population of Norfolk doubled in twenty years under the
Conqueror. For a time, too, the native population was united
by common sympathies against its foreign nobility ; and as the
Normans were gradually absorbed, all had a similar grievance
against the Poitevin and Angevine adventurers whom our kings,
from Henry II. to Henry III., encouraged. Accordingly,
while the term English denotes two separate races before
the Conquest, it comes to designate a new nationality after-
wards. The revolutionary decree that changed France from
provinces into departments was not more important for history
than these results, mostly unpremeditated, of the Conqueror’s ,
policy.

Few of the Conqueror’s own acts made a deeper impression
on his times than the formation of the New Forest. The
Hampshire preserves of the Saxon kings were increased by
laying waste seventeen thousand acres ; the villagers were
partially evicted, and more than twenty churches destroyed ;
tufts of yew are still said to show where the old churchyards
were. The nature of the soil, which is thin and sandy, proves •
that the district can never have been thickly inhabited. The
excuse that William wished to prevent the landing of an
enemy is less tenable, as the New Forest lay opposite to his
own Norman dominions.

His contemporaries regarded the act as the wanton bar-
barity of a, man who loved the pursuit of game better than |
his subjects’ happiness : it seemed the judgment of Heaven that
two of William s sons, and a grandson,1 found untimely deaths
in the forest which his violence had enlarged.

Phe rival prejudices of Norman and English writers make it

1 Richard, William’s second son, died of an illness caught in hunting.
His nephew Richard, Robert s son, was crushed or otherwise killed by &
branch in riding.

RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

difficult to decide which of the two peoples was the more
civilized. Norman literature before the Conquest is worthless ;
their law-courts have nothing to match the splendid series of
Anglo-Saxon charters. But these are rather proofs that their
civilization was modern, than that it did not exist. For a
century and a half English literature had been almost barren,
while within thirty years the Italians, Lanfranc and Anselm,
had founded a school in Normandy which was unrivalled in
its own days, and which almost reconstructed philosophical
thought in Europe. The English were renowned throughout
Europe for their perfection in the mechanical arts and em-
broidery ; but they imported their artists from Germany ; and
they produced nothing in architecture to rival those magnifi-
cent castles and cathedrals which the Normans have scattered
broad-cast over the land. It seems certain that the Normans
were more cleanly in their habits, and more courtly in their
manners ; their vices were rather passionate than gross, and
they had the virtues of gentlemen — large-mindedness and the
love of adventure. Timid devotion bound the Englishman to
his Church, while a narrow insular spirit was separating him
from the European centre of religion. The Norman distin-
guished better between the dues of Caesar and of God. He
built churches and attended mass; but he drew a line between
the citizen and the priest, which the latter was never allowed
to overpass. He connected the country with Europe and
Roman law, but he kept it free from foreign tyranny ; the
Italian legate or tax-galherer might venture here under a weak
king, but the barons repeatedly drove him back or foiled
him ; and under an able sovereign, Henry II. or Edward I.,
the see of Rome was limited to its natural functions of
! directing the European Church and adjusting the law of
lations. To sum up all, England without the Normans would
jiave been mechanical, not artistic ; brave, not chivalrous ; a
State governed by its priests, instead of a State controlling its
Church. It had lost the tradition of Roman culture, and
luring half a century of peace had remained barren of poets,
egists, and thinkers. We owe to Normandy the builder, the
might, the schoolman, and the statesman.1

1 Abridged from chapter xxxiv. of vol. i.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

LANFRANC. '

A.D. 1005 — 1089.

(Fro /a “ Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury by W. F. Hook. D.D.)

Lanfranc was born about the year 1005 at Pavia, in I
Lombardy. Here his name is still held in honour, a church
in the vicinity of the town being dedicated to San Lanfranco. ;
Although he was not nobly born, yet his father Hanbald and his
mother Roza are said to have been persons of senatorial rank
— a description which indicates a high position in society.

When the Lombards founded a kingdom in the north of
Italy, Pavia was constituted the capital. For many years, !
indeed, it succeeded to the position formerly occupied by
Rome, and then by Ravenna, as the metropolis of the whole
peninsula. At the time, however, of Lanfranc’s birth, each city
in Italy appears to have regarded itself as an independent State;
and there was in these towns more of real freedom than in any
other part of the world. The citizens were accustomed to
assemble in parliament, and the parliament was composed of
all persons in the State who were capable of bearing arms.
Two consuls were annually elected, and they were charged not
only with the command of the army, but also with the adminis-
tration of justice — the special department of Hanbald, who is
spoken of as one of the conservatores legum. . . .

The tastes of Lanfranc were not warlike, and he devoted
himself to the study of law. For this purpose he studied in
the schools of his native city, which in some respects differed
from the schools in Normandy and England. The universities
north of the Alps originated in the cathedral and monastic
schools, but those of Italy were frequently independent of the
Church : Bologna and Salerno had certainly not an ecclesi-
astical origin. The school of Pavia is said to have been
founded by Charlemagne,

LANFRANC.

We mention these circumstances connected with the birth-
place of Lanfranc and the place of his education, because they
conduced to the formation of his character, and of that spirit
of independence which he sometimes displayed. It is to be
remarked, that he was less subservient to the Papacy, even after
he had become an ecclesiastic, than was the case with the
generality of contemporary divines. So far as its external
relations were concerned, Pavia was Imperialist rather than
Papal, and the university was Imperialist in its origin.

Describing the success of Lanfranc as a lawyer, Ordericus
Vitalis informs us : — “ The youthful orator, when pleading a
cause, frequently triumphed over his veteran opponents, and
by a torrent of eloquence won the prize from men long in the
habit of eloquent speaking. At a ripe age his opinions were
given with so much wisdom, that learned doctors, judges, and
prelates of the city readily adopted them.”

It appears strange that, with such a career before him, he
should quit the sunny banks of the Ticino, and repair to the
less genial climate of Normandy, there to mix with men whom,
with Italian insolence, he regarded as barbarians. ... For the
solution of this difficulty we must refer to the general history
of the times. His migration took place when William the
Bastard was Duke of Normandy; it could not, therefore, have
been earlier than 1035. But between the years 1035 and
1039, the time of Conrad the Salic, there were great disturb-
ances in Italy, such as would affect a young man whose habits
were studious, and who had little turn for warlike pursuits. . . .
War was nearly universal. From an expression of Ordericus
Vitalis ... it would appear that Lanfranc regarded himself as
an exile ; from which we infer that his family was, in the
revolutions of Pavia, on the losing side, and that he was com-
pelled by circumstances to leave his country. Lanfranc had
studied at most of the universities or schools of Italy, and had
acquired a taste for literary and scientific pursuits ; and, on
leaving 'his native land, he determined to indulge his inclina-
tions by establishing a school in Normandy. Several reasons
may be assigned for his making choice of Normandy for the
place of his future labours. The political relations between
the Italians and the Normans had been long, frequent, and

IOO

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

intimate. There was in Normandy a dearth of learned men,
and the young Duke was reputed a patron of literature. Lan-
franc looked to Normandy with the same kind of feeling as
that which is experienced by young men of the present day,
when they are determined to seek or to make their fortunes
in the colonies. . . .

About the year 1039 Lanfranc opened a school at Avranches,
and became its magister. By his legal attainments, as well as
by his proficiency in every department of human learning, and
perhaps still more by his eloquence, he attracted crowds of
scholars. When books were scarce, clearness of arrangement,
readiness of illustration, and powers of distinct enunciation,
which constitute eloquence, were of vital importance to the
success of a teacher ; and, from early exercise in the lav/ courts
of Pavia, Lanfranc was as skilful in imparting knowledge as he
was laborious in acquiring it. Another secret of his success
may be discovered in the novelty of his teaching, differing as
it did from anything to which the northern nations had, of
late years, been accustomed. . . . Before the occurrence of the
Crusades, Greek literature was so little known in the cathedral
and monastic schools of the north, that it appeared with a
freshness in the schools of Avranches and Bee which exag-
gerated the fame of Lanfranc. It was said that “ to understand
the admirable genius and erudition of Lanfranc, one ought to
be an Herodian in grammar, an Aristotle in dialectics, a Tully
in rhetoric, an Augustine and Jerome and other expositors of
the law and grace in the Sacred Scriptures.” . . .

Although this passage, as far as Augustine and Jerome are
concerned, must refer to his teaching at Bee, rather than at
Avranches, it is important, because it points out the peculiarity
or speciality of his course of instruction.

The clergy of Normandy, as well as the laity, were among
his applauding hearers, Lanfranc, with all his accomplish-
ments, had, however, paid little regard to his spiritual interests,
and had grievously neglected the care of his soul. He was
now subjected to one of those sudden conversions, in the
reality of which, as a gracious influence of the Holy Spirit,
every true Christian believes, although none but a fanatic
regards them as essential and necessary ; . . . and he acted

LANFRANC.

IOI

suddenly under the impulse of a newly acquired enthusiasm.
One morning the scholars and hearers of the great magister of
Avranches assembled as usual, but Lanfranc did not make his
appearance. The great man was nowhere to be found. Had
he fallen into the hands of robbers ? Had he been deported
by jealous ecclesiastics ? Had he been murdered ? Had he
fled to some distant wilderness, and become a hermit ? Any of
these were possible events ; . . . but after a little inquiry, silence
was thought to be prudent, and curiosity gradually subsided.

As to the proceedings of Lanfranc hirnself, we have a minute
account of them in Mil<> GriVpimijk j lb 'partakes, of the cha-
racter of a legend, bur/there h some ^obeticai beauty in the
narrative ; and the . fictitious can easily be detected^hile a
considerable aCsidulini of probable fact is left. Lanfranc, ip
the earnestness of his zeal, desired , to ^ deyqte himself to/thfe
service of "his "Redeemer -in ^dne, of th,e3 strictest monasteries J
which he cduld And. Hew cold that the" establishment he,'
desired was to be found in the forest of Ouche ; and he was
forcing his way through a thick entangled forest in the neigh-
bourhood of Rouen, while the scholars of Normandy were
inquiring, with painful anxiety, for their revered and admired
preceptor. It was afterwards narrated that, in this journey
through the forest, Lanfranc was attacked by robbers, who left
him nothing but his clothes. It occurred to Lanfranc that he
had once heard of a pious man in a similar predicament, who,
being robbed of his horse, an unruly beast, freely presented the
robbers with his whip, in order that they might manage him.
The well-conditioned highwaymen, not to be outdone in gene-
rosity, refused the whip and returned the horse. Lanfranc
remembered that this story was quoted as an illustration of
acting on Scriptural principles, and determined to make the
same kind of experiment upon the better feelings of his assail-
ants. They had taken his purse, they might as well take his
clothes also. The Norman robbers, however, being matter-of-
fact men, and not deeply read in the Scriptures, supposed that
he intended to insult them ; they took his clothes, as he gene-
rously suggested, but never thought of returning his purse.
They left him only his cap, which they forced down over his
eyes, and then they bound him to a tree at some distance from

102

HIST ORICA L SELECTIONS .

the road. Lanfranc had now much time for painful thought.
He soon perceived the difference between an action upon which
the Divine blessing rested, because it was done bona fide, and a
similar action when resorted to as a clever manoeuvre. But,
strange to say, he, one of the most learned men of the age, was
unable to repeat a single prayer, psalm, or hymn. He was
ignorant, according to this representation, to an extent almost
incredible. But he trusted to the outpouring of his own over-
burdened soul, and prayed effectually ; vowing a vow to God,
that, if he obtained o the Divine protection now, he would ever
afterwards d^vofe hijnself to tfip service of the Church and to
the care< of his immortal soul. * 1 .vV , ^

Wj&Thti rRiorning came relief. His‘ piteous cry for help was
heapi-by "the travellers on the road noV farvdjistant. They
apj^oached and unbound < him,; and,- upon his/us^mg them to
name to him tlpe dearest,, nf onasjevy in the district, they directed
him to Bee. c ° c c c & L c ‘ '■ 1 k \ rcfeC

So secluded was this monastery, that he could only find it by
following the course of the river Risle, until he came to a
tongue of land formed by a back stream, or bee , flowing into
the main river. Here he saw a few huts, surrounded by fields
or gardens carefully cultivated, and in the most perfect order.
His eye rested upon a man in worn and tattered garments, with
uncombed hair and an uncut beard. In his handsome and
expressive countenance, and his aristocratic bearing, in which
nothing however of haughtiness remained, Lanfranc at once
recognised the head of this community of cottages. The abbot
was busy in making what was to be their public oven or bake-
house. “ God save you,” said Lanfranc. “ God bless you,”
replied the abbot, who had recognised the Italian pronunciation
of the stranger ; and added, “ You are a Lombard ? ” “I am.”
“ What do you want?” “To be a monk.” The abbot paused
from his toil. He was unable himself to read ; but Brother
Roger was working with him at the oven, and he was directed
to show the stranger the book of rules. They were few but
austere. Lanfranc read them. When he had concluded, he
said that, God helping him, he would keep them. The abbot
consented to receive him as a brother, and instantly the proud
scholar was prostrate at the feet of the illiterate recluse. The

LANFRANC.

103

abbot was Herluin — a remarkable man. A noble by birth, a
descendant from a Dane, one of the first who settled in Neustria,
he had been educated in the court of Gislebert, Earl of Brionne.
In feast and in battle-field he had been equally popular, until
the gross immoralities of a Norman court and castle revolted
his better nature, . . . and by the Spirit of the Lord he became a
converted man. The form and character of his religion was
shaped, of course, in a man void of learning, by the sentiments
prevalent in the religious world at the time, and by the example
of those who had been his spiritual advisers. He knew not
how to fly from the pollutions of Norman society except by
becoming a monk. . . . But such was the corruption of the
age, that some of the monasteries- had themselves become as
polluted as the Norman castle ; and Herluin sought in vain for
an asylum in Normandy sufficiently strict to meet the cravings
of his enthusiasm. He became, in consequence, the founder of
a monastery on his own estate ; where, surrounded by a fewT
followers, who were animated by a kindred spirit, he constituted
himself the abbot, and was duly consecrated to the office. A
few huts formed the residence of the monks, and the noble
mother of Herluin, converted like himself, was accustomed to
cook their dinner and to perform the menial offices they
required. The time was passed in an alternation of devotional
exercises and of manual labour. By the industry of the monks
the trees were felled ; and the field thus created was tilled,
manured, and sowed, until the wilderness had become the
paradise which had presented itself to the eyes of Lanfranc, as,
descending the hill, he came down into the fruitful valley.

Meantime Herluin had become aware that religion without
Darning soon degenerates into mere fanaticism, and, unable
himself to instruct the monks, he regarded Lanfranc as a
Godsend.

The softer parts of Lanfranc’s character are brought out in
his relation to Herluin, for whom he seems to have entertained
a profound respect. Hitherto, as we have seen, Lanfranc had
disregarded theology, and had been so careless in his religious
observances, as to be unable to repeat the common offices of
the Church ; and therefore, if at first he was inclined to smile,
when he saw the old knight wasting his oil, while endeavouring

104

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

to master the mysteries of a spelling-book, and when he heard
him indulging in false quantities whenever he attempted to
pronounce a Latin word, he was, on the other hand, astonished
and affected when he listened to him, as he poured forth his
treasures of Scriptural knowledge, and quoted those passages
especially which bring first alarm and then consolation to the
sinner’s heart. Herluin, though unable to read, had been an
attentive listener; and as he possessed a good memory, the
Scriptures were written upon the tablets of his heart Lanfranc,
comparing the spiritual knowledge with the general ignorance -
of Herluin, was heard more than once, after listening to the .
abbot’s discourse, to exclaim, “ Spiritus ubi vult spiratP

For three years Lanfranc remained a secluded penitent,
leading an ascetic life, and giving instruction to the monks
indoors, while Herluin directed their labours in the field. He
devoted himself to the study of Scripture, breaking up, as his
biographer tells us, the fallow ground of his heart, weeping as ;
he read. . . . It was soon noised abroad in Normandy, that" the
famous magister of Avranches had reappeared in the scholasticus :
of Bee. Among the scholars came the sons of princes and
nobles in the land : to repair to Bee became the fashion of the I
day. The huts were multiplied on the banks of the Risle :
temporary accommodation was provided. A more capacious
monastery was required, or Lanfranc must repair to some more
accommodating and convenient establishment. . . .

After some hesitation, Herluin consented to the enlargement i
of the buildings ; and thus was the foundation laid of one of
the most celebrated monasteries of Western Europe, from
which emanated no. fewer than three Archbishops of Canter-
bury.. Herluin retained the office of abbot, and assigned that
of prior to Lanfranc. . He reserved to himself the arrangement
of all matters of business and the secular concerns ; but he
confided to the Prior the internal regulation and discipline of
what may be called the new establishment.1

1 When first Lanfranc arrived at Bee, he was associated with men who,
if they knew Latin, were ignorant of the niceties of language and were
illiterate. The prior who preceded Lanfranc was probably selected as
being less unlearned than the other brethren, and was proud of his supe-
riority Lanfranc took his place among the monks, his name and character
being known only to the Abbot. It was Brother Lanfranc’s turn to read in

LANFRANC.

io5

The newly awakened zeal of Lanfranc now involved him in
a controversy likely to be attended by serious consequences,
although it conduced eventually to shape his future fortunes,
and to lead him to the highest eminence. William, duke of
Normandy, had contracted a marriage with Matilda, daughter
of the Earl of Flanders, and the marriage was within the degrees
of consanguinity now prohibited by the Church. The excom-
munication of the offenders, accompanied with an interdict on
the duchy, was threatened by the ecclesiastical courts at Rome,
Roman authority having been established early over the Church
of Normandy, from the intimate connexion which existed be-
tween the two countries. Lanfranc was loud in his denuncia-
tion of the marriage, and stood forth as an advocate for the
Church against the court. . . . The opinions of such a man,
eloquently expressed and eagerly reported by the enemies of
the Duke, had an effect similar to that produced in these days
by an article in a leading political journal. Lanfranc was, if
possible, to be won ; but this was no easy matter. Why had
not Duke William noticed Lanfranc at Avranches ? Whatever
was the reason, his neglect was not likely to be forgotten by
the Prior of Bee.

The Duke determined to make up for past neglect by send-
ing his chaplain Herfast, attended by a crowd of courtiers, to
Bee.. . . . Lanfranc understood, at once, the purpose of the
visit, and treated his visitors with marked disrespect. To the
amusement of the scholars by whom he was surrounded, he
placed in the hands of the royal chaplain an Abecedarium,
or spelling-book, and took every opportunity of exposing his
ignorance.

On the return of the courtiers, and on their report of the
proceedings at Bee, the Duke fell into one of those extra-
ordinary paroxysms of rage which seem to have been irresistible
in a Norman potentate; and he commanded the insolent
Lombard to quit his dominions. In order, moreover, to show

hall. He was proceeding with a sentence in which the word docere occurred,
and he, of course, pronounced it properly, with the middle syllable long.
‘‘Docere, docere,” said the prior, rather pompously; and docere was re-
peated by Brother Lanfranc. Lanfranc may have amused his friends by
relating the occurrence, for he had a sense of the ridiculous ; but graver men
dwelt upon the example here set of the monastic virtue of obedience.

io6

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

his indignation against the whole community, one of the granges
of the monastery was to be burnt to the ground.

What now took place it is difficult to narrate, because it is
evident that many nctle circumstances have been omitted by
Milo Crispinus, which are necessary to enable us to present
the whole proceeding, in all its particulars, to the mind’s eye.
Lanfranc certainly prepared to obey the Duke’s command.
The monastery was still poor, and the monks were possessed
of only one horse, a sorry jade, which soon became dead lame.
On this the Prior of Bee took his seat, attended by one servant.

Lanfranc directed his steps to Rouen, where he probably had
been summoned to appear before the Duke, previously to his
departure from Normandy. At this period a man’s dignity
was estimated by his equipage and the number of his attendants ;
and when the Duke was apprised of Lanfranc’s approach he
evidently expected to meet a large cavalcade. He went forth
prepared to encounter a haughty opponent, with whom he
would have to deal with the strong arm. But when he saw
the great man draw near, seated on a horse whose nose, at i
almost every step, touched the ground, he was irresistibly
amused ; and, in a lover of horse-flesh, the appearance of the
poor Prior may have excited some feelings of compassion.
His countenance, however, soon reassumed its usual stern and
unreadable expression. But the smile had not escaped the
observant Lanfranc; and he said, facetiously ( decente joco ),

“ By your commands I am leaving your dominions, but it is
only at a foot’s pace that I can proceed on such a wretched
beast as this : give me a better horse, and I shall be better
able to obey your commands.” The Duke took the joke, and
laughingly exclaimed, 44 Whoever heard before of an offender
venturing to ask a donation from the very judge whom he has
offended ? ”

Thus commenced the friendship of Duke William and Lan- i
franc. A private interview was granted to the Prior, and
the two great men came to a perfect understanding. Orders
were issued to repair the damage done to the monastery of
Bee ; and Lanfraiic was, soon after, on the way to Rome, to
obtain the papal sanction to the marriage of William with his
fair cousin.

LANFRANC.

107

Lanfranc’s conduct on this occasion has been sometimes
misjudged. ... Yet his becoming a courtier certainly did not
imply, on his part, any change of principle. He was perfectly
consistent. He had denounced the marriage of the Duke and
Duchess of Normandy, because it had been contracted within
the assigned limits of consanguinity, without a dispensation
from the Church, the power of granting which he supposed to
reside in the Roman Curia ; and this principle was not violated
when he advised the Duke to submit to the Church instead of
defying it, and to ask for a dispensation which he was himself
prepared to negotiate. . . .

The conditions on which Lanfranc negotiated the dispensa-
tion for the marriage were readily complied with. He had
stipulated, on behalf of the Duke and Duchess of Normandy,
that they should erect and endow two abbeys and four hos-
pitals. The abbeys, dedicated the one to St. Stephen, the
other to the Holy Trinity, were established in the city of
Caen ; the hospitals at Rouen, Caen, Cherbourg, and Bayeux.
The royal couple religiously adhered to the stipulations, which
were probably not made until their consent had been first
obtained; and in the midsummer of 10 66 the abbey of St.
Stephen’s was completed.

Lanfranc was now to suffer from the friendship, as he had
formerly suffered from the anger, of the Duke. He was com-
pelled to leave his much-loved Bee, and, at the earnest solicita-
tion of his new patron, to become the abbot of St. Stephen’s.
The object doubtless was that he might become, as he did
become, the preceptor of William’s children ; and Caen was for
that purpose a convenient situation. The office of prior, with
a resident abbot, would have been more congenial to the
feelings of Lanfranc, who was not only a student himself, but
was one who found his pleasure in imparting knowledge to
others. He could have dispensed with the almost regal cere-
mony with which an abbot was surrounded, although on
principle he exacted what, in the feeling of the age, was
^regarded as due to the dignity of his office.

. He arrived at St. Stephen’s, and took possession of his stall
3y the mandate of the founder. He received the benediction
jrom the Archbishop of Rouen. He proceeded to the chapter-

io8

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

house. The chapter-house was already filled by the brethren.
They had taken their seats, elevated by one step from the floor.
But when the Abbot entered they descended, and each bent
the knee and made obeisance as the great man passed.
The Abbot sat in solitary grandeur, no one presuming to
approach him until he beckoned to the prior. The prior drew
near, bending himself to his knee. Lanfranc gave him the kiss
of peace and placed him by his side.

Then came all the officers of the establishment and laid their
keys at his feet, which he graciously restored to their custody.

The Abbot repaired to the refectory. Two brethren ap-
proached, and, bending the knee, kissed his hand, and served
him with a towel and water. The feast then took place.
Lanfranc having retired to rest, was so wearied that he did not
rise at the usual hour in the morning. The greatest care was
taken not to disturb his slumbers. The boys in the schopl were
exhorted to make no noise ; but they were not permitted to
remain in bed when the hour had arrived for their lessons.
The master went quietly into the dormitory, and with his staff
pulled off the bed-clothes, beckoning to the boys to follow him
in silence. They washed, they combed themselves, and said
their prayers. Then they remained at lessons, until it was
notified that the Abbot was on his way to the chapel, where
they joined the procession.

Lanfranc now appeared episcopally arrayed, with the mitre,
the pastoral staff, the gloves and sandals. Standing in his stall,
when he had entered the church, he led the choir and sang
the whole service with spirit. When the service was concluded
he went to the gate of the convent, where he gave his blessing
to the poor, and ordered them to receive refection.

Of a man thus treated with an amount of deference
and respect which is in these days scarcely conceded to
royalty it is no slight praise to say that he was distinguished
for his affability. This is one of the virtues assigned as a
distinction to Lanfranc. What Matthew Paris says of another
abbot was equally applicable to Lanfranc: “He studied

books ; he preached in the chapter ; he was kind to the scribes
and their masters. In doubtful ordinances of his rule, as well
as in divine service, he took the advice of his convent before

LANFRANC.

109

he decided, while his affability and instruction extended to all.
He was always the first speaker in difficult cases, and was fond
of promoting hilarity.” Lanfranc’s munificence in the formation
of libraries in the several institutions over which he presided
should be mentioned to his praise. Not only were Caen and
Canterbury indebted to him, but, when the Abbot Paul erected
the scriptorium at St. Alban’s, the copies were supplied by
Lanfranc, at that time archbishop. He left at Bee a collec-
tion of one hundred and sixty volumes. The antiquaries of
Normandy conjecture, with probability, that to him they are
indebted for some of the valuable manuscripts in the public
library at Avranches. He employed much of his time, when
in England, in correcting the manuscripts of the Fathers and
the Scriptures which were found in the Anglo-Saxon monas-
teries not always correctly transcribed. . . .

In 1067 Lanfranc was elected to the archbishopric of
Rouen, but he resolutely refused to accept the office. He was
a man who would enter, heart and soul, into any work to which
he was called by the providence of God ; but his tastes and
inclinations were for private life and for the humbler pursuits
of learning. He had unwillingly accepted the office of abbot.
He disliked the secular duties which devolved upon him. He
preferred to deal with books rather than with men. . . . With
these feelings, Lanfranc had quitted the legal profession and
the prospects which were opened to him in early life of being a
statesman. Under similar feelings, he refused the important
position which the metropolitan see of Rouen offered to his
ambition as the head of the Norman Church ; and he declined
the invitation of William, now king of England, when in 1070
he offered him the archbishopric of Canterbury. ... He did
not feel called upon to plunge into that sea of trouble by
which William the Conqueror, through his ambition, had been
nearly overwhelmed. William, however, was determined to
carry his point. The queen Matilda, and her favourite son
Robert, who was a pupil of Lanfranc, came to St. Stephen’s to
implore him not to thwart the wishes of one who was accus-
tomed to command rather than to entreat. They did not
succeed. They were backed by the Norman nobles, who
acted as the Queen’s council. They did not succeed. His

HIS TO RICA L SELECTIONS .

venerable friend, the Abbot of Bee, was persuaded to exert his
influence ; but even Herluin did not succeed. The wish of the
King, the voice of the country, the appeal of friendship, having
been unsuccessful, William, determined to carry his point, *
directed the legate who had been sent from Rome to assist at
the council which had rendered the archbishopric vacant by
the deposition of Stigand to proceed to Normandy, and there
to convene an assembly of bishops, abbots, and nobles, with
a view of forcing Lanfranc into a compliance.

Lanfranc did not even then consent. He was unwilling to
fail in his loyalty to William, or to offend those who entreated
and admonished him. With a heavy heart he sailed for
England, in the hope that he should succeed in persuading
William that the retired habits of a monk and student were not
reconcileable with the active duties of an archbishop. The
King combated with kindness, grace, and dignity the excuses i
of the Abbot, and at length succeeded in overcoming his
reluctance. He would probably not even at last have carried ■
his point, unless Lanfranc had felt inclined to regard the wishes |
expressed by Pope Alexander II., who had been his pupil, as a
kind of command.

He was elected in August 1070, and he proceeded to Canter-
bury for his consecration, which took place on the 29th of
August. It was a melancholy ceremony, though Lanfranc was
attended by many of his friends. The cathedral had been
destroyed by fire three years before, and the conflagration had
spread over the whole city. There was no heart in the citizens
to repair the damage. As the Archbishop elect passed through
the street, the Saxon inhabitants looked grimly at the stranger.
The suffragans of the provinces were summoned as usual to
assist at the consecration of their metropolitan, — only nine were
able to attend, — in a shed raised upon the site of what had once
been a splendid cathedral, now utterly destroyed by fire.

We can imagine no contrast greater than that which was
presented by Canterbury to the happy home which Lanfranc
had been compelled to leave. All round him was desolation.
If he looked to the country at large, the Normans, from fear of
the Saxons, were almost besieged within the castles by which
the country was garrisoned ; the Saxons, incapable of vigorous

LANFRANC.

or systematic action for want of a leader, were nevertheless,
always on the point of insurrection. The only hope for the
country was in the successful vigour of the King. Its state may
be best described by Lanfranc himself, in the following letter,
addressed to Alexander II. : —

‘ ‘ I Icnow not to whom I can explain my troubles with more propriety
than to you, Father, who of these calamities are the cause. When the
Duke of Normandy forced me from the monastery of Bee, and appointed
me to preside over that of Caen, I found myself quite unequal to sustain
the government of a few monks, and therefore it appears to me a mysterious
decree of Providence that I should be appointed, compelled, by you to
undertake the supervision of an innumerable multitude. When the Duke
became king of England, he laboured in vain to effect this object, until
your legates, Hermenfrid, bishop of Sion, and Hubert, a cardinal of the
Holy Roman Church, coming into Normandy and convening the bishops,
abbots, and nobles, enjoined me, on the authority of the Holy Roman
Church, to accept the see of Canterbury. In vain did I plead my own
incapacity, my ignorance of the language, and of the barbarous people.

They would not admit my plea, and why should I say more ? I gave

my consent — I came — I took the burden upon me ; and such are the unmiti-
gated cares and troubles to which I am daily subjected, such the perturba-
tion of mind caused by parties pulling in opposite directions, the harrowing
cares, the losses, the harshness, the avarice, the meanness, the filthy conduct
which I see and hear around me, -such the danger to which I see the Holy
Church exposed, that I am weaiy of my life, and lament that it has been
preserved to witness such times. But, bad as is the present state of things,
when I look around me I fear that the future will be still worse.

“That I may not detain your Highness, whose time must be fully occu-
pied by much business, longer than is necessary, I entreat you for God’s
sake, and for the Lord’s sake, since it was by your authority that I was
involved in these difficulties, by the same authority to extricate me from
them and permit me once more to return to the monastic life, which, above
[all things, I delight in. Let not my petition, I entreat you, be rejected or
jdespised, for I only ask what is right in itself, and, so far as I myself am
j concerned, what is necessary to my highest interests.

“I beg you to remember what you ought never to forget, how ready I
always was to entertain in my monastery not only your relations, but all who
brought introductions from Rome. I instructed them in sacred as well as
secular learning, and I might mention other things in which, whenever an
'opportunity occurred, I endeavoured to render good offices to you and your
predecessors. Do not imagine that I am saying this by way of boasting in
regard to myself, or with a view of reproaching others. My conscience
acquits me of any such intention. My only object is to adduce some reason
why this favour should be granted me for Christ’s sake. If you place your
refusal to accede to my request on public grounds, instead of furthering the
i;ause of the Lord you will probably impede it, which God forbid ; for, as

1 12

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

regards the salvation of souls, I have neither directly nor indirectly met with
success, or, if any, it has been so slight, as not to be weighed for a moment
against my discomfort. But enough of this.

“When I had the pleasure of seeing you and conversing with you at
Rome, you invited me to visit you at your palace the following year at
Christmas, and spend three or four months with you. But I call God and
the holy angels to witness that I could not do it without personal inconveni- (
ence and the neglect of my affairs. I need not enter further upon these i
matters ; but, if my life be preserved, and if circumstances permit, my
desire is to visit you, and the holy Apostles, and the Holy Roman Church.
To this end I ask your prayers, that long life may be granted to my lord '
the King of England, and peace from all his enemies. May his heart and |
mind be love to God and His holy Church ! For, while he lives, we enjoy
safety, such as it is, but after his death neither peace nor any manner of
good is likely to befall us.”

The Pope refused to interfere, and Lanfranc now determined
to buckle on his spiritual armour. His desire was to commence
the work of restoration without delay, and he applied -to the
Court of Rome that the pallium might be sent to him. To do
this was inconsistent with the policy of Hildebrand, who, long
since, though holding only the office of archdeacon, had
directed all things at Rome. He saw the importance of forcing
all metropolitans to visit Rome ; he thus sought to advance the
Pope’s claim to a spiritual suzerainty, and to afford to Hilde-
brand himself an opportunity of infusing his notions into the
minds of persons whom he intended to bring to a subserviency
to his objects. A direct denial of the request was conveyed in
polite terms ; Lanfranc was assured that, if a dispensation could
have been conceded to any one, it would have been in favour of
him. . . .

Lanfranc was not inclined to show disrespect to the Roman
see while the occupant was his friend and pupil, Alexander II.

Accordingly, in 1071, he went to Rome, attended by Thomas,
archbishop of York, and Remigius, bishop of Lincoln ; three
foreigners representing the Church of England, and, like the
other Normans, being at the same time at variance with each
other. . . .

Lanfranc was received with affectionate kindness by Pope
Alexander. The Norman prelates were rich in the spoils of
England, and profuse in their presents to “ the greedy Romans.”
They were held in high estimation by the Roman senate and

LAN FRANC.

1 13

people, and were regarded as admirable, not only for their elo-
quence and learning, but more especially for their munificence.

On Lanfranc’s return to England, he commenced in earnest
the great work he had in hand — the reorganization of the
Church. . . . During the suspension of Stigand (archbishop of
Canterbury) Odo (bishop of Bayeux) appears to have been the
administrator of the see. Certainly the property came into his
hands. By the fire, which occurred three years before the
consecration of Lanfranc, the charters of the cathedral were
lost ; and Odo retained many of the manors belonging to the
archbishopric, contending that they were crown lands, which
had devolved upon him as earl of Kent.

No greater proof could be given of the King’s determination
to re-assert the majesty of the law, than his permission to
Lanfranc to institute proceedings against the second personage
in the realm. The fact also shows that, although Odo was not
in disgrace, yet his influence with his brother was no longer
what it had formerly been. The case was tried at a shire-mote
on Penenden Heath. It is the first account on record of a
lawsuit after the Conquest. . . .

The wealth he secured for his see Lanfranc expended nobly ;
400/. a year he devoted to religious and charitable uses — a sum
! equal, it is said, in weight to 1,500/. of our money, and amount-
ing in value to not less than 7,500/. This statement, if correct,
j shows not only the generosity of the Archbishop, but the
! immense wealth also of the see. A large portion of this sum,
I however, was spent in the improvement of the estates, and he is
said to have been especially careful to provide suitable resi-
dences for his tenants. St. Alban’s Abbey was largely indebted
to his liberality ; and at Canterbury he erected two Xenodochia
or Ptochotrophia,1 one at the north and the other at the west
end of the city, to which he assigned yearly pensions.

His next great work was the rebuilding of his cathedral, the
destruction of which by fire we have already mentioned. One
of the first acts of the new Archbishop was, to adopt measures
ifor its restoration on a scale of considerable magnificence. In

Inost of the processes of civilization the Anglo-Saxons had been

1 Hospitals like St. Cross, near Winchester, for the entertainment of
passengers, and as a home for the destitute.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

114

superior to the Normans, and especially in the decorative arts, I
such as jewellery and painting. But as in the science of war, |
and all that related to the destruction of human life, the j
Normans had the advantage of the Saxons, so also they were
their superiors in all that related to the arrangements of archi-
tecture. ...

While Lanfranc was completing the exterior edifice, he laid
the spiritual foundation of a Benedictine monastery in con- ;
nexion with the cathedral. Throughout the Saxon period fre- 1
quent attempts had been made to supplant the secular canons !;
in the chapter of the metropolitan church of Canterbury, and
to supply their place by regular monks. This was partly !
accomplished by Lanfranc ; and, to the time of the Reforma- j
tion, the chapter of the cathedral consisted of regulars. Henry,
the last dean of the old foundation, became the first prior of
the new. . . .

In 1077 Lanfranc received an invitation from Herluin to I
assist at the consecration of the new church attached to the
abbey of Bee. He gladly obeyed the summons, and we have
an interesting account of his proceedings. . . . The new monas-
tery of Bee was in a valley between two hills., surrounded by trees j
then lately planted, some of which are said to be in existence
still. Lanfranc had come with few attendants, and without
any of that parade or pomp with which great prelates in that !
age thought it prudent to surround themselves. As he looked
down upon his former home, from the hill which overtops the
convent, his feelings of self-humiliation increased. The only
ornament which he had reserved, by which he would be distin-
guished from an ordinary monk, was his episcopal ring : he
now took it off, and never resumed it except when officiating
in the public offices of the Church. He was determined to be
a monk among monks. As he drew near, he saw the venerable
Herluin, bent down by the weight of more than fourscore years,
standing at the foot of the path ready to embrace him. They
passed the bakehouse where first they met. They entered the
new and magnificent cloister. Here the Archbishop talked
familiarly with the brethren, and felt as a modem prelate might
be expected to feel on revisiting a college where his eminence,
as an instructor of youth, and as a maintainer of truth, first

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115

recommended nim to the notice of his superiors. Lanfranc
would permit no deference to be shown to his rank. It is
told, as a thing remarkable in those days, that in the refectory
he sat in the midst of the brethren, eating at the same table,
drinking from the same cup, and served from the same salver.
All were fascinated by his condescension. An episcopal
throne was raised for him in the choir, but he declined to
occupy it. He took his seat in the prior’s stall, on the left
side, opposite to that of the abbot, and, with that polite
facetiousness for which he was celebrated, he pleasantly
remarked that it was his by right of prescription. He was
invited to consecrate the„ new church or chapel, and with the
King’s consent he did so. The consecration took place on
the 23d of October. The venerable abbot, overcome by the
late excitement, had been for eight days confined to his
apartment. But the morning was bright and clear, and he was
able not only to assist at the service, but to preside at the
entertainment given to the bishops, abbots, nobles, and clergy,
pupils of Lanfranc, who had flocked to the reunion, and sought
to obtain from their former master an archbishop’s blessing.
Tears were shed on both sides when the time of parting came.
Herluin was able to accompany the Archbishop for two miles
on his journey, and then the two friends parted ; the one to
sing his “ Nunc dimittis,” the other to plunge once more into
the politics, turmoils, and controversies of the world, which
offered a painful contrast to the abode of peace and piety
which he had now visited for the last time.

Lanfranc, who, unlike some of his successors, had no desire
to exalt the Church above the State, had felt no reluctance in
acting as the minister of William in civil affairs. There can
be little doubt that he was appointed justiciary in conjunc-
tion with Robert, earl of Moreton, and Geoffrey, bishop of
Coutances, during some part of the Conqueror’s reign. There
are two of his letters which are addressed to the King during
his absence from England, one of which I translate, as it is
characteristic : —

“ To his lord, William, "king of the English, his faithful Lanfranc sends
his faithful service and faithful prayers. Gladly would we see you, as an
angel of God, but we are unwilling that you should take the trouble of

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

crossing the sea at this particular juncture. For, if you were to come to
put down these traitors and robbers, you would do us dishonour. Rodulph
the count, or rather the traitor, and his whole army have been routed, and
ours, with a great body of Normans and Saxons , are in pursuit. Our leaders
inform me that in a few days they will drive these perjured wretches into the
sea, or capture them dead or alive. The details I send you by this monk,
who may be trusted, as he has done fealty to me. May the Almighty
bless you ! ”

Lanfranc’s influence with the King, and his devotion to the
cause of the Normans, are certain facts ; and from the account
which has reached us of a circumstance attending the disgrace
of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, we have an indication of the tone
of the Archbishop’s mind, when his opinion was asked. . . .

Odo had made himself and his countrymen unpopular by
the extortions of which he was guilty, in order that he might
amass wealth. The wealth he amassed was enormous; and,
in amassing it, he had a special object in view. He had
already purchased a house in Rome, and was expending his
money liberally, with a view to secure his election to the papal
throne. This gave offence to the King. We do not see clearly
the reason why the conqueror of England should prevent his
brother from becoming the purchaser of Italy ; but feelings
of hostility against William had evidently rankled in the mind
of Odo ever since the nomination of Lanfranc to the see
of Canterbury. The brothers, gradually estranged from one
another, had now become enemies. William accused Odo of
high treason. He arrested him in the Isle of Wight. Odo was
tried by his peers, and found guilty. When William determined
to apprehend him and commit him to custody, the Bishop of
Bayeux pleaded his priestly character. The King consulted the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc acutely remarked that he
was to be apprehended not as bishop of Bayeux, but as earl of
Kent. He said this with a smile, which shows that, in consult-
ing him, the King was aware of the kind of answer he would
receive.

D* When an attack was made on the rights of the crown by no

79 less, a person than Gregory VII., we find Lanfranc acting in a
similar spirit. . . . The Pope demanded of William the homage
due from a vassal to his lord, and an oath of allegiance. This
demand was conveyed to the King by the Pope’s legate,

LANFRANC.

117

Hubert, who was also directed to complain of the non-payment
of the Peter-pence.

The Pope of Rome received the following curt answer from
the King of England : —

“Thy legate Hubert, Holy Father, hath called upon me in thy name to
take the oath of fealty to thee and to thy successors, and to exert myself in
enforcing the more regular payment of the money which my predecessors
were accustomed to remit to the Church of Rome. One request I have
granted, the other I refuse. Homage to thee I have not chosen, nor do I
choose to do. I never made a promise to that effect, neither do I find that
it was ever performed by my predecessors to thine. The money in question,
during the three years past, owing to my being frequently in France, has
been negligently collected.

“Now, as I am by Divine mercy returned to my kingdom, the money
which has been collected is transmitted by the aforesaid legate. As for
the rest, it shall be sent as opportunity shall occur, by the legates of our
trusty archbishop Lanfranc. Pray for us, and for our kingdom, for we
always respected thy predecessors, and we would fain regard thee with
sincere affection, and be always thy obedient servant.”

Gregory was not a little irritated at the significant and
haughty tone of this epistle. He recalled his legate, and de-
sired him to take no further steps about the Peter-pence, as
this, without the homage, was valueless. Such an insult as
that offered by this Christian prince to the Apostolic see, in for-
bidding the prelates of his kingdom to approach its threshold,
he said had never been offered even by Pagan kings. He
directed Hubert to warn William once more of his evil ways,
to reproach the prelates for obeying the King rather than the
Pope, and to depart from his kingdom. . . . Gregory was much
too politic to quarrel with such a man as William. He did,
indeed, say that the King should be made to feel the resent-
ment of St. Peter ; but either St. Peter was not so vindictive as
his reputed successor, or King William was beyond his reach.
Gregory, nevertheless, conscious of his powers of persuasion,
endeavoured to compel Lanfranc to visit him at Rome, but in
vain; Lanfranc’s loyalty to the King was greater than his
reverence for the Pope. His determination and silence were
resented by Gregory, who at last addressed to him the following
threat : —

u Often, my brother, have I invited you to come to Rome for the A- £•
confirmation of the faith of the Christian religion, but hitherto, as it would 1001

A. D.

I080

m8 historical selections.

seem, through pride, or through negligence, you have disregarded our
summons, until you have exhausted our patience. You have not even pre-
tended to advance any canonical reason for refusing to come ; for such
excuses as the fatigue and the difficulty of such a journey are utterly ;
insufficient. It is well known that many from a long distance, invalids ;
infirm of body, some scarcely able to rise from their beds, influenced by an
ardent zeal for St. Peter, are accustomed when summoned to hasten, through
means of carriages or litters, to the threshold of the Apostle. Now, there-
fore, we charge you by our apostolical authority, that setting everything
else aside, without waiting for a fit opportunity, without pretending fears
which are utterly idle, you take care to make your appearance at Rome
within four months from this date, on All Saints’ Day in the present year.
Thus you may make amends for a disobedience we have so long overlooked.

If these apostolical mandates are unheeded, if you do prefer, notwithstand-
ing your professions of respect, to persevere in your contempt, and do not
blush to incur the peril of disobedience — a sin, according to Samuel
(1 Kings xv.), as heinous as idolatry — know this for certain, you shall be
severed from the grace of St. Peter, and utterly stricken by his authority.

In other words, if within the time specified you shall not come unto us,
you shall be suspended entirely from thy episcopal office.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury did not go, and Lanfranc was
not suspended from his episcopal office. The time had come
when a Pope could use this threat ; but the time had not yet
arrived when he could defy a potent King and carry it into
effect. . . .

In 1080 Gregory VII. was deposed at councils held at Mentz
and at Brixen in the Tyrol ; and Guibert of Ravenna was elected
in his place, under the title of Clement III. . . . Which was
Pope, and which w-as anti-Pope, was a question which men
decided according to their inclination, their interests, or their
wishes. We are not concerned with the legality or the illega-
lity of the proceedings ; we only notice the fact as adding to the
confusions in which the Church was involved. . . .

William and Lanfranc could not, of course, be very far in
advance of the age in which they lived. The forged decretals 1
were supposed to be as true as the Gospel. That the alleged
inheritance of the rights of St. Peter devolved upon the Pope,

1 Decretals were the letters of Popes, written in answer to questions pro-
posed to them by some bishop or ecclesiastical judge. In the ninth century
there appeared a collection of decretal letters ascribed to more than thirty
Popes, the uniform tendency of which was to exalt the papal power. These
were afterwards proved to be forged. — E. M. S.

LANFRANC.

I19

whatsoever they might be, was not denied. But, this error
being conceded, the wisest measures were taken that under
the circumstances could be devised, to preserve the indepen-
dence of the Church of England. When there were two or
more Popes in existence, as was frequently the case in the
miserable schisms of the age, the right of choosing his Pope
was vested in the King ; so that the clergy were not permitted
to acknowledge any one as Pope until the royal consent had
been obtained. When the Pope had been acknowledged, no
letters from Rome might be published until they had first been
approved by the King. Moreover, it was enacted that no
ecclesiastic should leave the country at his own pleasure.

The ecclesiastical polity of this reign should be carefully
observed by those who desire to understand the ground of
resistance offered by the kings and prelates of England to the
papal aggression.

These principles were, ....

1. That the clergy should not be permitted to acknowledge any
one as Pope until the royal consent had been first obtained.

2. That no letters from Rome should be published until
they had first been approved by the King.

3. That the Church of England, in council assembled under
its primate, might pass no laws or canons but such as were agree-
able to the King’s pleasure, and were first ordained by him.

4. That no bishop might implead or punish any of the King’s
vassals, even for great sins, except by the King’s precept.

5. That no ecclesiastic should leave the country at his own
pleasure.

Thus did these great legislators lay a foundation for the
liberties of the Church of England, at a time when
Gregory VII. was on the papal throne. One great error,
however, was committed ; through which it became difficult,
and finally impossible, to preserve the principles so clearly
asserted, and . which the Conqueror himself so resolutely
maintained.

During the Anglo-Saxon period . . . there was no dis-
tinction between lay and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The

county court was a spiritual as well as a temporal tribunal,

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

where, on the same bench, sat the bishop and the ealdorman.
There was a perfect union between Church and State. William
and Lanfranc introduced the Continental system, and separated
the ecclesiastical court from the civil. We have scarcely yet,
by very recent legislation, been extricated from the difficulties
resulting from the co-existence of two systems of law — the
canon law in the spiritual court, and the common and statute
law in the temporal — and . . . from this circumstance contro-
versies frequently arose by which society was convulsed.

Lanfranc proceeded to legislate in accordance with these
principles, and to restore discipline to the distracted Church in
a series of six councils, which, according to the Chronicle, were
held at the following times and places : —

I. Winton, 1072. IV. London, 1078.

II. London, 1075. V. Gloucester, 1081.

III. Winton, 1076. VI. Gloucester, 1086.

No council could meet in the Western Church at this time,
without legislating on the celibacy of the clergy. . . . Pope
Gregory VII. had decreed that all married clergy should cease
from their clerical office, and that people should avoid the
ministration of those who contravened his injunctions. The
Church of England, under the direction of Lanfranc, pursued
a wiser and a milder course. Among the clergy of the Church
of England, before the time of Dunstan, as Dean Milman
justly observes, marriage was the rule, celibacy the exception ;
and still in those cathedrals which were served by the secular
clergy the canons were generally married men. Under these
circumstances, all that the Synod of Winchester, in 1076,
decreed was, that none who were now in priest’s orders
should be permitted to marry, and that no married man should
hereafter be ordained priest or deacon. The married men,
who were already in holy orders, were not required to dismiss
their wives. It was, probably, with a view to put a stop to
clerical marriages, that it was enacted that no marriage should
be valid without the priest’s benediction. . . . The "relations
between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglo-Saxon
clergy were friendly. We do, indeed, find Lanfranc acting
harshly on certain occasions, for he was, in politics, a decided

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121

party man. He was loyal to William, whom he regarded as
the legitimate king of England, holding the crown by the
nomination of Edward, and the election of the Witenagemot,
as well as by right of conquest. He regarded, therefore, an
insurrection as a rebellion, and treated those who were in arms
against the Norman aggression as rebels. But in the adminis-
tration of the Church he appears to have acted with prudence
and justice. . . . Very few of the Anglo-Saxon bishops and
abbots were deposed : among the prelates, only three, besides
Stigand— a very small number considering that the country
was in a state of revolution.

We cannot suppose it possible that Lanfranc could have
been a persecutor of the Anglo-Saxons as such, when we find
him writing the following letter to the sister of Edgar the
Atheling. Margaret, queen of Scotland, may be regarded as,
next to Edgar, the head of the Anglo-Saxon race, to whom she
and her husband had, under circumstances of persecution, not
unfrequently offered an asylum : —

Lanfranc to Margaret, Queen of Scots.

“ Lanfranc, the unworthy Priviate of the Holy Church of Canterbury ,

to Margaret, the illustrious Queen of Scots, Greeting and Bene-

diction.

“ The small compass of a letter is insufficient for declaring with what joy
you have filled my heart, O Queen, well pleasing to God, by your excellent
epistles which you have sent me. With what pleasantness do your words
flow forth, proceeding from the inspiration of the Divine Spirit ! I believe,
indeed, that what you have written is said not by you, but for you (i.e. by
Divine inspiration). Truly by your mouth has He spoken, who said to His
disciples, 4 Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.’ From this
teaching of Christ has proceeded, that, born of royal ancestors, royally edu-
cated, and nobly wedded to a noble king, you choose me, a man of foreign
extraction, vile, ignoble, involved in sins, as your father, and pray me to
consider you as my spiritual daughter. I am not what you think me to be,
but may I become so ! Lest you remain deceived, pray for me that I may
be worthy as a father to pray to God and to be heard for you. May there be
between us an interchange of prayers and benefits ! I bestow little indeed,
but I hope to receive much more myself. Hence, therefore, may I be your
father and you my daughter. I send to your illustrious husband and your-
self our dearest brother Master Goldewin, and two other brethren, accord-
ing to your request, because he himself would not be able to accomplish
alone what is requisite for God’s service and your own. And I beg and

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

in treat that you may endeavour quickly and perfectly to complete what you
have undertaken for God and your own souls. If you are able or are desirous
to finish your work by means of others, we greatly desire these our brethren
to return to us, because they are very necessary to us in the offices of our
church. Your will, however, be done, since in and for all things we desire to
obey you. May the Almighty God bless you, and mercifully absolve you
from all your sins !”

The prelate who stood highest in public estimation, next to
Lanfranc himself, was Wulfstan, the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of
Worcester, Between him and the Archbishop of Canterbury
there was a good understanding, if not a cordial friendship.
When application was, on one occasion, made by the Arch-
bishop of York to the Primate of all England, to send two of
his suffragans to assist at a consecration, one of the prelates
selected by Lanfranc was the Bishop of Worcester. ... At a
subsequent period, we find Wulfstan co-operating with the
Archbishop to carry into effect the last wishes of the Con-
queror with respect to the succession to the crown. . . .

Amongst the controversies in which the Archbishop was
involved, was one which occurred almost immediately after his
consecration, with Thomas, archbishop elect of York. Lan-
franc demanded and Thomas refused the oath of canonical
obedience. . . . The controversy terminated in 1072, in a com-
promise, through the interposition of the King. It was
determined, in a synod of fourteen bishops, that the Arch-
bishop of York should be subject to the Archbishop of Canter-
bury in things pertaining to religion, and be required to obey
his summons to a synod. The province of York was to extend
from the Humber to the extremity of Scotland, the rest of
England being within the province of Canterbury. The prelate
elect of York, after having received the archbishopric as a gift
from the King, was, with the other bishops of his province to
go for consecration to Canterbury, or wherever the Arch-
bishop of that province might require his attendance. The
Archbishop of York, as a general rule, was to swear obedience
to the Primate of all England ; although Lanfranc waived the
oath with respect to Thomas himself, and was contented with
his subscription. This was the concession made by Lanfranc,
arising probably out of circumstances which occurred during
the controversy ; but, as we should suppose, knowing Lan-

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123

franc’s relation to the Conqueror, the Archbishop of Canter-
bury carried all his points. . . .

Lanfranc was engaged in another controversy in the year 1088,
where he certainly does not appear in the most amiable colours.
We are not acquainted with all the grounds of provocation, but
the conduct of the Archbishop appears to have been arbitrary
and harsh. From a very early period a jealousy had existed
between the rival establishments of St. Augustine’s and Christ
Church.1 The chapter of the cathedral boasted of having at
its head the Primate of all England ; the brethren of St. Augus-
tine’s were equally proud of the rank held by their convent, as
the first of the English monasteries. By the monks of St.
Augustine’s the final institution of a Benedictine monastery in
connexion with the cathedral was not regarded with friendly
feelings. The misunderstandings between the two corporations
increased until they came to a climax, at the time just men-
tioned. Provoked, we may presume, by many years of opposi-
tion and ill-will, the Archbishop determined upon a despotic
act, which the monks resisted. He nominated an abbot whom
he desired the chapter of the monastery to elect. The monks
sturdily refused to elect the Archbishop’s nominee. There was,
probably, some political feeling mixed up in the dispute. The
monastery may have given sanctuary to Anglo-Saxons con-
cerned in insurrectionary movements, and therefore the mili-
tary forces of Kent were placed at Lanfranc’s disposal. At
their head the Archbishop appeared before the gate of the
monastery, and peremptory orders were issued that the
brethren should receive Wydo as their abbot.

Resistance was now vain ; and, in obedience to the com-
mand of the Archbishop, every brother who refused to vote for
Wydo was required to leave the monastery, not in force, but
one by one. One by one they went, and then the Archbishop
took possession of the building. With considerable state he
entered the church ; he installed Wydo, and made over to him
the monastery. The unfortunate prior, and those whom the
Archbishop regarded as ringleaders in this act of rebellion,

1 Christ Church was the Benedictine monastery founded by Lanfranc in
connexion with the cathedral ; the chapter being supplied by the monks
belonging to the monastery. — E. M. S.

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Lanfranc put into claustral imprisonment in Canterbury. He
adopted conciliatory measures, however, with partial success, 1
towards the others. He heard that they had taken refuge in St. :
Mildred’s Church, and he sent to them a messenger to say that
if they returned to the church of St. Augustine’s by the ninth
hour, they should be re-admitted into the monastery ; but that,
if they refused, they should be treated as renegadoes. Having
heard this message, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, they
doubted whether to return or to remain ; but at the hour of
refection, when they were pressed by hunger, many, repenting
of their obstinacy, went to Lanfranc and promised submission.
They were treated with courtesy, ate a good dinner, and took
the oath of obedience to the Abbot Wydo. The more noble
minority were imprisoned in different monasteries, and one,
who bore the illustrious name of Alfred, who attempted to fly,
was loaded with irons at Canterbury, and, with some others
who were guilty of the same offence, was treated with the
utmost severity.

The Archbishop soon found that the baser sort who had
yielded to the force of circumstances were not to be depended
upon, for they were discovered plotting the death of their
abbot. One of them named Columban was brought before
Lanfranc, who demanded of him whether he designed to
murder his abbot “ Yes,” was the reply. “ If I could, I would
certainly kill him.” Then the Archbishop commanded that he
should be tied up naked to the gates of St. Augustine’s and
suffer flagellation in the sight of all the people. When this
part of the sentence was completed, the man’s cowl was torn
off, and he was driven out of the city. “ Henceforth,” says
the chronicler, “ during Lanfranc’s life, sedition was repressed
by the dread of his severity.”

This is a sad picture of the times. Another transaction of
a similar character, but attended by more important conse- j
quences, may here be narrated in juxtaposition. It occurred
a few years before.

Among the victims demanded by the policy or the cupidity
of the Conqueror was the Earl Waltheof. He was not a
faultless character, but the Normans (the vile Norman woman
included whom the Conqueror had compelled him to marry)

LANFRANC.

125

plotted against him, and Waltheof was executed privately, for
fear of the people, at Winchester. The whole Anglo-Saxon
population were in a state of indignation, and Waltheof was
regarded as a martyr. His body had been ignominiously
thrown into a hole between two roads, and hastily covered
with dust. At the end of a fortnight the people discovered
; where the body lay; they declared that the bloody corpse
'exhibited no signs of decay, the blood being as fresh as if the
Earl was just dead. Followed by the lamentations of vast
crowds of people, they translated it to the abbey of Croyland,
and there gave it honourable interment in the chapter-house of
the monks.

Wulfketul, the abbot, was a strong and decided party
man. He sought to rouse the Anglo-Saxon spirit by de-
daring that miracles were daily wrought at the shrine of the
fiew saint.

Lanfranc had been well aware that at the shrines of Anglo-
Saxon saints the whole patriotic feeling was sustained and
aroused, and he had on several occasions depreciated the
ecclesiastical heroes of the Anglo-Saxon period, and declared
hem to be no saints. He now accused Wulfketul of idolatry.

4 For the wrong reverence,” says Ingulf, “which he had
hown for the holy martyr, the abbot was condemned as an
dolater at a council held in London. He was degraded
fom his ecclesiastical dignity, and sent as a simple monk
;o be under the custody of Thurstan, the Norman abbot of
dlastonbury.

Thurstan was a man who, in the words of Roger of Hoveden,

4 is not worthy to be named.” He had been a monk of Caen,
ind to procure him the abbey of Glastonbury, the Saxon abbot
tgelnoth had been deposed. . . .

The monks of Glastonbury endured with patience and
aeekness the insolence, the tyranny, and the injustice of
he proud Norman. In order, as he said, to keep down
heir high spirit, but in reality to fill his own coffers, Thur-
tan almost starved the community. Their conduct is thus
escribed by a contemporary, in terms affecting from their
implicity : 44 They were lovingly-minded towards their abbot,
nd begged him to govern them in right and in kindness,

126

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

and they would be faithful and obedient to him. But the
abbot would none of this, but wrought them evil, and threatened
worse.”

But patience and forbearance have their limits. He robbed
them of their food ; he kept them out of their library, and sold
their books. They were physically and intellectually reduced
to the last extremity. But they found consolation in the
services of the Church, where they worshipped God as their
fathers had worshipped, according to their old service-books,
and with the" Gregorian chant. The shameless abbot, as
Ordericus calls him,, determined to drive them from this their
last resort. He was a musician and an anti-Gregorian. He
was delighted with a new system of Church music, of which f
William of Feschamp was the author. He ordered its intro-
duction into the choir of Glastonbury.

Then, at length, was aroused the Anglo-Saxon spirit, and the |
determination, uNolumus leges Anglise mutari.” The monks,
in full chapter, decided against the innovation, and refused
obedience to the abbot. Thurstan was not, however, the man
to yield. To enforce his orders he threatened to call in the
military. The monks fled from the chapter-house to the
church, and closed the doors. They were followed by the
soldiers, who, under the direction of the abbot — a hireling,
whose own the sheep were not — scaled the buttresses of the
church, and announced their arrival upon the rafters at the top
of the choir by the discharge of a volley of arrows upon the;
defenceless monks below. The reredos, behind and above the |
altar, was pierced full of arrows. Meantime the monks, thus
assaulted, were unable to defend the doors, through which
another party of soldiers entered, headed by the abbot. The
defeated brethren clung to the altar, but this was no protec-
tion. The abbot, who was not born with any peculiar mark of
reverence on his head, rushed forward and speared one of his
brethren, and killed another who, pierced with arfows, lay
groaning at his feet. The monks, compelled by necessity,
now bravely defended themselves with the benches, the
candlesticks, and with whatever else they could lay their hands
on, and succeeded in driving back the soldiers out of the choir,
with the loss of two killed and fourteen wounded.

LANFRANC.

127

The report of the scandal rendered a judicial investigation
necessary, and the abbot was so notoriously the aggressor that
the King removed him from his post ; but, consigning him to
the monastery of Caen, did not subject him to that amount of
punishment which he deserved. He was afterwards restored
by William Rufus, on the payment of a fine.

By the overruling providence of God, good is educed from
evil ; and, from the occurrences just stated, attention was called
to the importance of some approach to uniformity in the ritual
and offices of the Church.

Hitherto each bishop arranged the rubrics of his diocese,
and ordered the details to be observed in the performance of
public worship according to his will. The abbots claimed a
similar authority in the regulation of their several monasteries.
With this privilege the Archbishop had not the power, if he
had the inclination, to interfere. But a model of what was
regarded at the time as decorous in the celebration of divine
service was provided in “The Use of Salisbury/’ This work
was drawn up about the year 1085, to prevent the repetition in
his diocese of scandals such as had occurred at Glastonbury,
by Osmund, the bishop of the see just mentioned. Osmund
was a man of note. He had fought for the Conqueror, and had
been created Earl of Dorset. He was the second chancellor
whom William appointed after his accession to the throne.
He became Bishop of Salisbury in 1078, when he applied his
powerful mind to ecclesiastical affairs. Having settled his see
at Old Sarum, he built his cathedral ; he collected together
clergy distinguished for their learning and their skill in chanting ;
and, with their assistance, he ascertained all rubrics which
were not sufficiently determinate, or where books, through the
inaccuracy of transcribers, were inconsistent with each other;
he adjusted and settled the ceremonial on points which had
been previously left to the discretion of the officiating minister;
in fine, he produced a “ custom book,” which was, wholly or
oartially, adopted in various parts of the kingdom, especially
n the south of England. With several interpolations intro-
duced from time to time, it became the model ritual of the
Tnurch of England, until the reign of Philip and Mary, when
nany of the clergy received licences from Cardinal Pole to

128

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

say the Roman breviary. In the reign of Edward VI., and in ;
that of Queen Elizabeth, it became the basis of our present
Book of Common Prayer.

The sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of his
suffragans was given to these proceedings, by the appointment |
of the Bishop of Salisbury to act as precentor of the Episcopal
College, and to conduct the services whenever the prelates
assembled in synod. . . .

In 1087 Lanfranc received a letter from the death-bed of
the Conqueror, requiring him to anoint his second son, William
Rufus, as his successor. The Norman law seems, at this time,
to have given the power of nominating his successor to the
reigning prince. The Conqueror himself, though a bastard,
succeeded to the dukedom on the authority of his father’s nomi-
nation. The Anglo-Saxon constitution gave to the Witena-
gemot the right, if not of electing any one of the royal family
to the throne, at least of rejecting the eldest born. When
the Conqueror’s will was known, therefore, it did not occur
to either Lanfranc or Wulfstan to suppose that any wrong was
done to Robert Curthose, of whose unfitness for the throne
there could be but one opinion, or that there was any irregularity
in the proceeding.

To the sagacity of the Conqueror the policy of separating
the dukedom of Normandy from the kingdom of England had
become apparent. He had himself experienced the difficulty
of maintaining the interests of the two states, which could never
be amalgamated, and might often become divergent.

But this separation was the very thing to which all the
Norman interest would be most resolutely opposed. ... If the
kingdom and the dukedom were separated between the king |
and the duke, there might be war ; and the barons who adhered :
to the king would lose their estates in Normandy, and the
estates in England would be confiscated of those who gave
their support to the duke. It is by bearing this in mind that
we can account for several facts. We see the reason why the
Conqueror, when, determining to place his second son on the
English throne, did not consult his barons. We see why the
barons were opposed to the accession of Rufus. We see, also,
why the Red King, and afterwards his brother Henry, were so

LANFRANC.

129

anxious to obtain possession of the dukedom, in addition to
the English crown.

On the other hand, nothing could be more agreeable to the
Anglo-Saxon population than the separation of the two realms.

If England were separated from Normandy, the independence
of the kingdom, under any dynasty, would be re-established.
Wulfstan, therefore, as a patriot, acting throughout his career
not from passion, but from principle, cordially co-operated with
Lanfranc ; and Lanfranc, in love to the country of his adop-
tion, manfully maintained the Anglo-Saxon cause. A procla-
mation was issued, appealing to the feelings of the Anglo-
Saxon population ; and from the forests and fens, from the
morasses and the woods, as well as from the towns, there came
forth an army which enabled Rufus to intimidate his barons ;
until, having carried his point, he was enabled to unite with
them in the renewed oppression of his benefactors.

The wonderful power which Lanfranc possessed in the
management of men is evinced in the fact that, so long
as he lived, William Rufus was, to a certain extent, kept under
control. But the life of Lanfranc was now drawing to a
close, and in his death the realm and Church suffered a loss
which was irreparable.

In the month of May, 1089, Lanfranc retired to his new a.d.
monastery at Canterbury. He exercised there the office ofI0^9
abbot, which was always more congenial to his feelings than
that of the episcopate. He was still a man of letters, and was
not only devout but scrupulous in his devotions. He was
enjoying his retirement, when he experienced a slight attack of
fever. This, at his advanced age, was not to be neglected.

The infirmarer prescribed a remedy, and directed it to be taken
immediately. But the Archbishop had determined to receive
the Holy Communion, and delayed taking the draught lest it
should break his fast. The delay, as the physician stated, was
fatal ; and on the 24th of May he expired. His former adver-
sary, Thomas, archbishop of York, attended the funeral, which
was honoured by the presence of many of the suffragans of
Canterbury.

Lanfranc was buried in Trinity chapel, at the east end of
the cathedral, on the south side of the altar. When the chapel

1 3o HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

was replaced by the present edifice, his body was removed, and
buried at the altar of St. Martin ; but no trace of it remains,
nor is there any monument extant, erected to the memory
of this consistent assertor of the liberties of the Church of
England.1

THE DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

A.D. 1087.

{From “ The History of Normandy by Sir F. Palgrave.)

a. d. Amongst the other troubles and causes of trouble attached,
1087 like so many curses, to the inheritance of Rollo, was the un-
settled claim to the territory afterwards called the Norman
Vexin or Beaucassin. William had been unable to assert his
right (against Philip of France)— a better and more just cause
of quarrel than such pretensions usually are. But in the year
1087 he determined to recover this territory, not only as his
own, but in consequence of its great importance. Like all
border countries, it contained a turbulent and unquiet popula-
tion, and, in this instance, Frenchmen both by race and interest,
they were always ready to invest the Normans.

The fatal opportunity now arose, which gave an excuse and
incitement to action.

Without any assigned reason, though most probably insti-
gated by Robert, the burgesses of Mantes declared a petty
war against William, and crossing the Eure, with a disorderly
body of marauders, they plundered the neighbourhood of
Evreux, particularly the domains of William de Breteuil and
Roger de Ivry. They made much spoil and took many pri-
soners, and returned driving flocks and herds before them,
and conducting the bound captives, from whom so good a
profit was to be made, glorying equally in the gain, and in
the affront thus offered to the pride of Normandy.

1 Abridged from chap. ii. voL ii.

DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

I3i

William was roused to great anger : he was offended by the
insult of this foray, and, connecting Philip with the transaction,
he demanded the cession of Mantes, Pont-Isare, and Chau-
mont, in addition to the whole of the Beaucassin territory thus
unjustly withheld. Philip refused, raising many cavils unfairly,
and, instigated by the undutiful Robert, evading rather than
denying the claims. Coarse jests passed between the sove-
reigns, by which they were mutually embittered ; and William,
now no longer to be restrained, prepared to assert his rights by
the sword.

It is rare that the chroniclers become descriptive ; in this
instance, adopting the style of the Trouveurs, and most pro-
bably echoing some popular ballad of the day, they tell us
how the harvest was ripening, the grapes swelling on the stem,
the fruits reddening on the bough, when William entered the
fertile land. As he advanced the corn was trodden down, the
vineyards rooted up, the country havocked, the gifts of Provi-
dence wastefully destroyed. An imprudent sally of the inhabi-
tants of Mantes, with the intention of saving their crops,
enabled William to enter their town, which was fired by the
soldiery. Churches and dwellings alike sunk in the flames,
many of the inhabitants perished, even the recluses were burnt
in their cells.

William, aged and unwieldy in body, yet impetuous and
active in mind, cheered the desolation and galloped about
and about through the burning ruins. His steed stumbled
amidst the glowing embers : like the third sovereign who bore
the name of William, the royal rider received a fatal injury
from his fall. A lingering inflammation ensued, which the
skill of his attendants could neither allay nor heal. The
noise, the disturbance, the tainted atmosphere of Rouen
became intolerable to the fevered sufferer, and he was pain-
fully removed to the conventual buildings of St. Gervase, on
the adjoining hill. The inward combustion spread so rapidly
that no hope of recovery remained, and William knew that
there was none.

Firmly contemplating the end, and yet dreading its approach,
he sent for Rufus and Henry, his sons : and now ensued that
conflict, a feeling never entirely absent from the death-bed,

k 2

132

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

but sometimes so painfully visible, when, as personified in the
symbolical paintings of old, we behold the good angel and the
evil demon contending for the mastery of the departing soi l ;
the clinging to earthly things with a deep consciousness of
their worthlessness, self-condemnation and self-deceit, repent-
ance and obduracy- — the scales of the balance trembling
between heaven and hell. “ No tongue can tell,” said he,
“ the deeds of wickedness I have perpetrated in my weary
pilgrimage of toil and care.” He deplored his birth, bom to
warfare, polluted by bloodshed from his earliest years, his
trials, the base ingratitude he had sustained. He also extolled
his own virtues, praised his own conscientious appointments
in the Church, expatiated upon his good deeds, his alms,
and the monasteries and nunneries which under his reign
had been founded by his munificence.

But Rufus and Henry are standing by that bedside, and who
is to be the Conqueror’s heir? How are his dominions to be
divided ? William must speak of his earthly authority ; but
every word relating to the object of his pride is uttered in
agony. Robert, as firstborn, is to take Normandy ; it was
granted to him before William met Harold in the field of the
valley of blood. “ Wretched,” declared the King, “ will be
the country subjected to his rule ; but he has received the
homage of the barons, and the concession once made cannot
be withdrawn. Of England I will appoint no heir ; let Him
in whose hands are all things provide according to His will.”
All the wide-wasting wretchedness produced by his ambition
rose up before him ; it seemed as if the air around him was
filled with the wailings of those who had perished at his
behest, by the sword, by famine, and by fire. Bitterly lament-
ing his anger, his harshness, his crimes, he declared that he
dared not bestow the realm he thus had won : and yet this
reserve was almost a delusion ; the natural feeling of a father
prevailed, and he declared his hope that Rufus, who from
youth upwards, whatever were his other defects of character,
had been an obedient son, might succeed him.

And what was Henry Beauclerc to inherit ? A treasure of
five thousand pounds of silver.

Henry began to lament this unequal gift. “ What will all

DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR .

*33

this treasure profit me,” exclaimed he, “ if I have neither land,
nor house, nor home?” William comforted his youngest son,
and that strangely, by intimating his foreboding that Henry,
becoming far greater than either brother, would one day
possess far greater and ampler power.

But the very words which William had spoken now excited
his own apprehensions; the intimations he had thus given
might, by implying a doubt of his right to confer the succes-
sion, instigate rebellion. He turned him round in his weary
bed, and directed that a writ should be prepared, addressed to
Lanfranc, commanding him to place Rufus on the throne ;
and the dying man, who had just vowed that he would not
take thought concerning the sinful inheritance, affixed his
royal signet to the instrument by which, in fact, he bequeathed
the unlawful gain, and he forthwith delivered the same to
Rufus, kissed him, and blessed him ; and Rufus hastened away
towards England, lest he should lose the blood-stained crown.

Henry, too, departed, to secure his legacy, and to consider
how he should best protect himself against the troubles which
he might occasion or sustain.

Both sons have now left their dying parent. More suspense,
more agony. Those who surrounded him had heard of alms
and of repentance, of contrition, and of distribution of the
wealth no longer his own — some portions to make amends
for the wrongs he had committed, some to the poor ; the ample
residue to his sons. But as yet no real charity ; of forgiveness,
nothing had been said by William, nothing of remission to
the captives in the dungeon, upon whom the doom of per-
petual imprisonment had been passed. William assented to the
remark, and yet justified himself for his severity. Morcar had
been hardly treated, and yet how could he, William, restrain
the fear which he had felt of his influence ? Roger de Breteuil 1
had shown a fell revenge ; — yet let them be freed. Woolnoth,
the brother of Harold, a child when he fell into the hands
of the Conqueror, who had sternly kept him in bonds since
the days of his infancy, and Siward of the north, were to be

1 Sometimes called De Montgomery, the earl of Hereford, — son of Wil-
liam Fitz-Osbern, count de Breteuil. He had been imprisoned ever since
his rebellion in conjunction with Waltheof. — C. M. Y.

*34

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

released ; and William ended by commanding that all the
prison doors in England and Normandy should be opened,
except to one alone — except to Odo his brother. Much were
those about William saddened by this hardness ; many and
urgent were the entreaties made, but above all by the third
brother, Robert of Mortaigne. At length William relaxed his
severity, but without relenting, declaring his unchangeable con-
viction of Odo’s perfidy, and that he yielded against his will.

This act of grudging, coerced, extorted forgiveness was his
last. A night of somewhat diminished suffering ensued, when
the troubled and expiring body takes a dull, painful, unrestful
rest before its last earthly repose. But as the cheerful, life-
giving rays of the rising sun were darting above the horizon,
across the sad apartment, and shedding brightness on its walls,
William was half-awakened from his imperfect slumbers by the
measured, mellow, reverberating, swelling tone of the great
cathedral bell. “ It is the hour of prime,” replied the atten-
dants, in answer to his inquiry. Then were the priesthood
welcoming with voices of thanksgiving the renewed gift of
another day, and sending forth the choral prayer, that the hours
might flow in holiness till blessed at their close. But his time
of labour and struggle, sin and repentance, wTas past. William
lifted up his hands in prayer and expired.

As was very common in those times, the death of the great
and rich was the signal for a scene of disgraceful neglect and
confusion. . . . His sons had already departed : all who remained
of higher degree rushed out to horse, each hastening to his
home, for the purpose of protecting his property against the
dreaded confusion of an interregnum, or preparing to augment
it. Those of meaner rank, the servants and ribalds of the
court, stripped the body, even of its last garments, plundered
every article within reach, and then, all quitting him, left the
poor diseased body lying naked on the floor.

Consternation and apathy were after some hours diminished.
The clergy recollected their duty, and offered up the prayers
of the Church; and the archbishop directed that the body
should be conveyed to Caen. But there was no one to take
charge of the obsequies, not one of those who were connected
with William by consanguinity, or bound to him by blood or

DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

135

by gratitude ; and the duty was performed by the care and
charity of Herlouin, a knight of humble fortune, who himself
defrayed the expenses, grieved at the indignity to which the
mortal spoil of his sovereign was exposed, and who, as the
only mourner, attended the coffin during its conveyance to Caen.

At the gates of Caen clergy and laity came forth to receive
the body : but at that very time flames arose ; the streets
were filled with heavy smoke; a fire had broken out which
destroyed good part of the city ; the procession was dispersed,
and the monks alone remained. They brought the body to St.
Stephen’s monastery, and took orders for the royal sepulture.
The grave was dug deep in the presbytery, between altar and
choir. All the bishops and abbots of Normandy assembled. After
mass had been sung, Gilbert, bishop of Evreux, addressed the
people ; and when he had magnified the fame of the departed,
he asked them all to join in prayer for the sinful soul, and
that each would pardon any injury he might have received
from the monarch. A loud voice was now heard from the
crowd. A poor man stood up before the bier — Asceline, the
son of Arthur — who forbade that William’s corpse should be
received into the ground he had usurped by reckless violence.

The bishop forthwith instituted an inquiry into the charge.
They called up witnesses, and the fact having been ascertained,
they treated with Asceline and paid the debt, the price of that
narrow little plot of earth, the last bed of the Conqueror.
Asceline withdrew his ban ; but as the swollen corpse sank
into the grave, it burst, filling the sacred edifice with corrup-
tion. The obsequies were hurried through : and thus was
William the Conqueror gathered to his fathers, with loathing,
disgust, and horror.1

1 Abridged from chap. xiv. voL iii

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

*36

THE NORMANS IN SICILY.

-'M

A.D. IOO3—IO90.

[From “ The Normans in Sicily ,” H. Gally Knight, Esq. M.P.)

a. d. When the Normans first made their appearance in the south
1003 of Italy, the greater part of what had constituted the Roman
empire was in that disjointed and unsettled state which enables
the strong hand to grasp at and reach anything. The scenes
of real life, at that time, resembled those of a melo-dramatic
theatre, in which incidents the most improbable diversify the
piece, and personages the least expected figure on the stage.

Italy, which had been on the point of becoming one united
kingdom under the Lombard sceptre, was again, and for ever,
shattered and divided by the policy of the Lateran. The
Popes, perceiving that under undisturbed kings of Italy the
successors of St. Peter would become little more than bishops
of Rome, offered the empire of the West to strangers powerful
enough to break down the Lombard dominion : but these
foreign lords, when absent, could not restrain disorder, and,
when they crossed the Alps, more than once gave the Popes
reason to repent of having delivered themselves into their hands.

On the revival of the empire of the West, Apulia, Calabria, and
Sicily had been suffered to remain with the emperors of the East.
The two former they still governed by viceroys, styled Catapans,1
who were periodically sent from Byzantium ; but Sicily had long
been wrested from their sway by the victorious Saracens.

On the western side of the peninsula, the three Lombard
principalities of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, the Abbot
of Monte Casino, and the republic of Amalfi, asserted their
independence. Naples elected its own rulers, but acknow-
ledged the supremacy of the Greek emperors. These little
states were seldom on friendly terms, but had not sufficient
strength to do each other as much harm as they wished without
foreign assistance.

1 From Catapan, which means 4 ‘over everything,” is derived captain.

THE NORMANS IN SICIL Y.

137

Such was the posture of affairs in that part of the world
when the Normans arrived there — not as in France, in the
character of terrible invaders, but as emigrants and stipen-
diaries. Conquest and dominion, however, equally awaited
them in the end.

In the year 1003 Drogo, a Norman chief, on his return from
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem landed, with about forty companions,
at Salerno. The Saracens attacked the town whilst the Nor-
mans were there. Drogo, with his companions, put himself
at the head of the people, and repulsed the invaders.

The Duke of Salerno, having witnessed the prowess of
the valiant strangers, pressed them to remain. The pilgrims
excused themselves at the time, but engaged to return. In
the following spring Drogo, with a band augmented by no
small, number of bold adventurers, fulfilled his promise, re-
turned to Italy, and entered the service of the Duke of Salerno.
For some years after their arrival in Italy, the Normans were
employed as stipendiaries in the service of different masters ;
sometimes at Salerno, sometimes at Capua, sometimes in the
pay of the Abbot of Monte Casino,1 . . . whilst others be-
came freebooters, and disturbed the country with predatory
incursions.

As much to repress these disorders as to accommodate the
band who were in his pay, the Prince of Capua granted the
Normans a district of land between Capua and Naples, on
which spot they all reunited, and built the town of Aversa.

Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Capua employed the Nor-
mans in an expedition against the new Abbot of Monte Casino,
and, becoming master of the greater part of the heritage of St.
Benedict through their assistance, presented them with a large
slice of it for themselves.

On a subsequent occasion, the Normans restored the dis-
possessed Sergius, duke of Naples, to his dukedom of Naples ;
in return for which Sergius rewarded them with large presents,
bestowed his daughter in marriage on Raynulfus, whom the
Normans had elected as their chief, and conferred on him the
dignity of Count of Aversa.

1 A celebrated monastery founded by St. Benedict A.D. 528. It became
the model for all the monasteries of Western Europe.— E. M. S.

a. n.
IOO3

1021

A. D.
1023

1025

138 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

The Normans, having thus obtained a firm footing in the
peninsula, now communicated with their brethren in France,
informed them of their prosperous situation, and invited as
many as might be so disposed to join the colony. Many
accepted the invitation, and it was on this occasion, in the
year 1022, that three of the twelve sons of Tancred de Haute-
ville,1 (William, Drogo, and Humphrey,) who were destined to
perform so conspicuous a part on the new arena of Norman
renown, came out, with the martial adventurers, to Italy.

The new-comers were invited by Maniaces, the Byzantine
general, to join the Imperial troops in their approaching expe-
dition against the Saracens of Sicily. The terms which Maniaces
offered were half the booty and half the towns that might be
taken. Such a proposition was too tempting to be refused, and,
choosing for their leader William, the eldest of the sons of
Tancred de Hauteville, this division of the Normans enlisted
under the Greek banner.

In Sicily the comparatively small band of the Normans
performed the most gallant exploits, and often turned the fate
of days which the Greeks were on the point of losing. William,
the Norman leader, who was the very model of a knight of
romance, signalized himself on all occasions, and, transfixing
with his lance the Saracenic governor of Syracuse, struck a
panic into the enemy, and obtained for himself the surname of
Bras de Fer. A large part of Sicily was recovered from the
Saracens ; but, when the difficulties were overcome, Maniaces
forgot to fulfil his engagements : neither was the booty divided,
nor were any of the conquered towns put into the hands of the
Normans. The Normans dissembled their resentment, but
determined to be revenged, and effecting their return to Cala-
bria whilst Maniaces and his troops were occupied in Sicily, at
once entered the territory of the Greek Emperor, and possessed
themselves of Melfi, Venosa, Lavello, and other places.

It was fortunate for the Normans that intrigues of the
palace recalled Maniaces to Byzantium at this critical moment,
for Docianus, upon whom the command devolved, was a
general of very inferior abilities. Defeated by the Normans,

1 Tancred de Hauteville was a Norman gentleman of small fortune, who
lived on his lordship of Hauteville, in the diocese of Coutances.

THE NORMANS IN SICILY.

139

j whose whole army amounted to seven hundred horse and five
hundred foot, on the banks of the Ofanto, he underwent a
!: second and still more disastrous defeat near Monte Piloso.

In 1043 Maniaces, restored to favour under a new reign, was
sent to change the fortunes of the war ; but he had scarcely
'time to signalize himself by the most revolting cruelties at
j Otranto, and in the small part of Apulia which he recovered,
'before another change in the Byzantine government again
j: checked his course. He received an order from the capital
j to give up the command ; but instead of submitting, he assumed
the purple himself, and proclaimed independence. The em-
peror Monomachus, on receiving intelligence of this event,
thought it advisable to negotiate with the Normans, and, by
propositions of peace and promises of liberal rewards, to induce
them to lend him their aid against his rebellious subject.
Nothing could have happened more favourable to the fortunes
lor the inclinations of the Normans. Interest and revenge alike
disposed them to attack Maniaces. They compelled him to
shut himself up within the walls of Tarento, from whence he
took the first opportunity of embarking to pursue his ambitious
projects by carrying the war into Epirus. There he was met by
an army of Imperialists, and, in the first engagement, defeated
and slain.

The Normans, victorious, and, for the present, unopposed A. d.
by the Byzantine emperor, had now time to breathe. They 1043
immediately called a general assembly of their countrymen,
md began by rewarding William, their leader, for his valour
and his prudence, by declaring him their chief magistrate, and
saluting him with the title of Count of Apulia; and, with that
i nclination for institutions for which the men of the North
jvere so remarkable, they convened a second and more solemn
assembly at Melfi, to decide upon the manner in which their
lew acquisitions should be governed. 1

The form of government which they selected was one likely
o emanate from a camp. It was a purely military and purely
iiristocratical council, composed of twelve members, elected by
he army from amongst their leaders, and dignified by the title
)f counts. They were to meet at stated periods, assist the chief
nagistrate with their advice, frame laws, and decide on all public

140

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS, .

a. d. matters. Melfi was declared to be the capital, a town common
to all, and the place at which the council were to meet. . . .

Norman Apulia thus became a State, and the peninsula was
at rest ; but William Bras de Fer enjoyed his new dignity little
1045 more than a year. He died in 1045, universally and deeply
lamented, and was succeeded in his office and dignity by his
brother Drogo.

1047 Two years afterwards, Robert and Hubert, two more sons of
Tancred de Hauteville, came from Normandy by land in the
disguise of pilgrims, and joined their countrymen at Apulia.

The rule of Drogo was pacific, but it was shortly concluded
in blood. Whether the Normans governed with kindness or
severity, the Lombard and Apulian nobles soon became im-
patient under the yoke of strangers and upstarts, and secretly
conspired to release themselves from it by the base resource of
the dagger. On the morning of the 4th of August, 1051, which
1051 was the feast of St. Lawrence, when Drogo repaired, before it
was light, to hear mass in the church of the saint, an assassin
rushed from behind the door, and gave the Count a mortal
wound in the back. On the same day, and at the same hour,
several more Normans were assassinated in other towns of
Apulia. But enough victims had not been reached. The dis- '
contented failed to raise the country in their favour. Humphrey,
Drogo’s next brother, lost not a moment in assuming the reins
of government. The Norman sway remained unshaken, and
a similar conspiracy was never again attempted. Ere long,
the Normans had to sustain another and a more formidable
1053 assault. Leo IX. had been persuaded to behold in the Nor-
mans a power dangerous to the interests of the Papal See.
Under this impression he, like his predecessors, had recourse
to the emperors of the West, and obtained from Henry III.
(of Germany) the assistance of an army which the Pope under-
took to command in person. The Normans undertook to avert
the storm by the most humble submissions ; but Leo was not
to be appeased, and, on the 18th of June, 1053, the two armies
met on a plain rear Civitella. On this occasion the Normans
appear to have had no more than three thousand horse and
a small number of foot, whilst their antagonists amounted to
four times that number.

THE NORMANS IN SICIL K

The result of a long and well-contested battle, in which
lumphrey and Robert de Hauteville greatly distinguished
hemselves, was, that the German army was totally defeated,
nd the Pope remained a prisoner. The Normans now gave
)roof that they possessed as much wisdom as courage. Aware of
he spiritual influence of Rome on the minds of men, they knew
hat any injurious treatment offered to the head of the Church
fould infallibly bring down upon them a deluge of indignation.

Instead, therefore, of treating the Pope as a captive, the
sT ormans fell at his feet, and implored his pardon and his
dessing. They became his escort, and conducted him, as if he
vere returning in triumph, to Benevento. Leo IX. was so touched
yy a conduct the very opposite of what he expected, that he
:onfirmed to the Normans all they had conquered, or might
conquer, in Apulia and Calabria, and made an alliance with
he very men whom he came to expel.

After this happy termination of so menacing a storm,
Humphrey devoted himself to consolidate the Norman power
n Apulia by the maintenance of order, whilst his brother
Robert, at the head of a separate force, prosecuted the con-
quest of Calabria. ... In the course of these campaigns
Robert had frequent recourse to those stratagems, the habitual
lse of which obtained for him the surname of Guiscard,1 or
‘ the Wily.” On one occasion, when, from the natural strength
)f its situation, he despaired of taking the citadel of Malvito,
ie sent word to the monks of a convent within its walls that
pne of his officers was dead, and besought them to give him
burial in their church. The bier wras carried and accompanied
by unarmed men. In the midst of the funeral service the
corpse started up in complete steel and put swords into the
lands of the escort. The garrison, taken by surprise, laid
lown their arms, and the gates of the fortress were opened to
Robert by his own soldiers.

- In 1055 Humphrey died, leaving young children, by his A-D-
pvife Matilda, the sister of Raynulfus. Their tender age, and xo55
;he habit which by this time was established, of electing brother
ifter brother, afforded Robert an easy road to that supreme

1 Guiscard in the old Norman dialect meant ruse, — the wise heart or
1 vizard.

142

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

a. d. power for which his ambition thirsted, and which his great
% abilities fitted him to hold. In 1056 the fourth son of Tailored j
I0^° de Hauteville was proclaimed Duke of Apulia and Calabria,
1059 and in 1059 he was confirmed in all his titles and possessions
by Nicholas IX., in return for which he entered into a solemn
engagement to become the defender of the Church.

In the meantime (in the year 1057) Roger, the youngest son
of Tancred de Hauteville, on the death of his father, came out,
with his mother and his three sisters, to Calabria. He was in
the flower of his age ; bold, active, intelligent, cheerful, andi: i
kind; and to these great and amiable qualities added thejl
external advantages of a tall stature and a manly beauty.

Well received by Robert, he was entrusted with a separate '
command, in the exercise of which he so much distinguished
himself, and became so popular with his men, that the jealousy
of Robert was awakened. On his part, Roger considered that
his services were inadequately requited. For some time the
two brothers were estranged; but Robert, soon made aware
that Roger could be no less dangerous as an enemy than
useful as a friend, put an end to the misunderstanding, by
conferring on his brother the country of Melito, and all the
western part of Calabria, including Scylla and Reggio, the
towns which remained the last in the hands of the Byzantine
emperor. . . .

After the recall of Maniaces from Sicily all that had been
recovered from the Mahometans fell back into their hands.
The Saracens were again masters of the whole island ; but
having now ceased to acknowledge the supremacy of the
Kaliphs of Egypt, and parcelled out the island into separate
jurisdictions, they soon began to quarrel amongst themselves.
In the course of one of these struggles Ben et Themnah was
dispossessed of the government of Catania. Compelled to fly,
and bent on revenge, he repaired in disguise to Mileto, in the
1061 winter of 1061, and endeavoured to persuade Count Roger
to invade Sicily. About the same time arrived a deputation
of Greeks from Messina, on the same errand, though with
different views. The Messinese represented that the Saracens
were again disunited ; that half the population of the island
were Greeks and Christians, who were looking to the Normans

THE NORMANS IN SICIL Y.

143

for relief, and ready to lend them every assistance. The
depositions and exhortations of the two parties encouraged
the Norman leaders to attempt the conquest of Sicily.

March and April were employed in preparations. The
Duke arrived in person with his troops in the south of Cala-
bria. But the Saracens of Palermo, apprised of the design of
the Normans, dispatched several vessels to cruise off Reggio,
and prevent the expedition from crossing the straits. The
wary Robert saw so much hazard in the enterprise that he
repeatedly postponed the attack. His youthful brother, how-
ever, unable to restrain himself any longer, without communi-
cating his intentions to the Duke, one dark night set sail
with no more than 270 soldiers, eluded the vigilance of the
Palermitan cruisers, landed in safety a little below Messina,
took the Saracens by surprise, and, assisted by the co-operation
of the Christians within the walls, before morning was in pos-
session of the city. The Duke lost no time in joining the
Count with reinforcements ; and leaving a garrison in Messina,
the two brothers advanced into the Val Demona. This part of
the island was principally inhabited by Christians, who received
the Normans as deliverers. In the meantime the Saracens
collected their forces, and taking the field, at length offered the
Normans battle on the plain below Castro Giovanni. If we
are to believe the ancient historians, the Normans had on this
Dccasion only 700 men, whilst the Saracens had 15,000. What-
ever were the numbers, the Normans obtained a complete
/ictory, and, for some time, relieved themselves from any
urther attack.

Little more was done that year, except by Roger, who on
one occasion ventured, at the head of a hundred men, as far
Its Agrigentum ; on another, nearly to Syracuse ; and each time
:ame back to the camp laden with the spoils of the enemy.

|)n his return from his second expedition, he was invited to
Craina by the Christians, who put him in possession of the
own, and he was there keeping his Christmas when he
eceived the news of the arrival in Calabria of Robert de
Irentemesnil, prior of St. Evroult in Normandy, with his
isters Emma and Eremberga.

On his way from Hauteville to Italy, Roger had passed some

144 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

days at the priory of St. Evroult, and on that occasion, as
may be inferred, saw and admired the beautiful Eremberga,1
who, in the habit of a novice, with her sister Emma, was
residing under the roof of their brother. A subsequent mis-
understanding with William, duke of Normandy, compelled
the prior of St. Evroult to seek his safety in flight, and his
two sisters would not be left behind. The Count no sooner
heard of their arrival in Calabria than he hastened away from 1
Traina, and shortly afterwards was united to the object of his j
first affections at Mileto.

a.d. The following year the Count returned with his young \

1064 Countess to Traina, and, leaving his wife in that town, pro- ;
ceeded to besiege Nicosia. During his absence the Greeks
of Traina, who perhaps had reason to complain of the con-
duct of the Norman soldiers, broke out into open revolt. The |
Count hastened back, and the revolt was apparently subdued ; :
but the Saracens, encouraged by these divisions amongst the
Christians, suddenly approached, were received into the town
by the discontented inhabitants, and, uniting with them, be-
sieged the Count and the Normans in the citadel. For four
months the Normans had to endure every sort of privation,
and to such extremities of every kind were they reduced, that
the Count and Countess had only one cloak between them.
But the cold of an unusually severe winter by which they
suffered led to their release ; for it induced the besiegers to
endeavour to warm themselves with wine. The Count, whose
eagle eye was ever on the watch, perceived that the discipline
of the enemy was relaxed, and, making a sortie, whilst the
darkness of night favoured his object, slew so great a number
of the Saracens that the terrified remainder took to flight, and
the Normans were again masters of the place. When the siege
was raised, the Count was obliged to return to Calabria, to
recruit his forces ; and such was the confidence with which
Eremberga had inspired him by her conduct during the siege,
that he left her in command of Traina ; and so deserving did
the young Countess prove herself of the trust, that, during
the absence of her husband, she fulfilled all the duties of

1 Eremberga was a name assumed, instead of Judith, by the lady whop
she arrived in Italy.

THE NORMANS IN SICILY.

145

governor, gave orders where the sentinels should be placed,
and every night went the round of the walls, to see that her
orders were obeyed.

For some time the Duke was so fully occupied with estab-
lishing and maintaining his authority in the newly-conquered
towns and district of Calabria, that he was unable to detach
any part of his forces to Sicily; and the Count, who had
returned to his post, was left to keep his ground single-
handed.

The Saracens, aware ofshis situation, and strengthened by the
arrival of an auxiliary band from Africa, advanced to attack
him, and took up a position on the heights above the river
Cerami. So great was the disparity of numbers that the
Count himself doubted, for a moment, what course to pursue.

The order, however, was given to storm the heights.

; As the Normans were advancing, an unknown knight in
resplendent armour, on a white steed, and bearing a lance
tipped with a cross of gold, darted from amongst their ranks.

A cry of St. George ! St. George ! was heard. The soldiers
believed that the Saint was come to assist them in person, and
under tiis impression were excited to a degree of enthusiasm
which made them irresistible. The Count himself, rushing
upon the Emir of Palermo, unhorsed and slew him, in spite
of the chain armour in which he thought himself safe. The
Saracens fled in confusion, and the Normans remained masters
of the field.

In the subsequent year the Count carried an incursion
within a short distance of Palermo. The Saracens came out
to meet him at Miselmiri, and again were defeated with loss.

On this occasion some baskets were found amongst the spoil,
containing carrier pigeons, which the Arabs were accustomed
to employ, and which were meant to have conveyed the tidings
of victory to Palermo. The Count let them fly, but with the
symbols of defeat.

At length, when the important town of Bari had submitted,

"he Duke felt himself at liberty to leave Calabria, and in A B.
he spring of 1072 the two brothers proceeded to invest the 1072
Saracenic capital, Palermo. Robert posted himself on the
vest of the city, the Count was encamped on the east* and

146

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

a Norman fleet blockaded the port. The siege lasted five i
months, in the course of which various gallant exploits were
performed on both sides, as well by sea as by land. At
length some of the Sicilian Christians who were in the service
of the Saracens secretly informed the Duke that they could
facilitate his entrance into the citadel. The assault was then
resolved upon.

The Count advanced upon the eastern side, the fleet menaced
the harbour, whilst the Duke, under cover of some gardens, j
applied his scaling ladders to the western walls. After a L
severe struggle, the Normans were in possession of the upper
town and citadel. The Saracens retreated within the walls of !
one of the suburbs, but aware that any prolonged defence was I
now hopeless, they offered, the next morning, to laydown their
arms, if they might remain in possession of their property, J
adhere to their own religion, and be governed by their own J
laws. The Duke at once accepted their proposal; and this |
example, which was followed on subsequent occasions, greatly j
facilitated the conquest of the remainder of the island. When
this important point was arranged, the two brothers made their
triumphal entry into Palermo at the head of their troops, and
sending for Nicodemus, the Greek Archbishop, who during the
sway of the Saracens had been restricted to a miserable chapel, -
they reinstated him in his own cathedral, which had been
turned into a mosque.

The Duke remained one year at Palermo, and then returned
to Calabria, conceding to his brother the entire dominion of
Sicily, save and except Palermo, with the beauty and magni- <
ficence of which he was so much captivated that he could never
bring himself to give up the jurisdiction of the capital. From
this time Roger assumed the title of Count of Sicily.

Four years elapsed before any further conquests were at-
tempted. ... In the meantime Robert, giving way to his
a.d. ambitious disposition, had embraced every opportunity of
1076 extending his dominion in Calabria. In 1076 the citizens ;
of Amalfi, groaning under the tyranny of Gisulfus, prince
of Salerno, applied to Guiscard for assistance. Guiscard at
first represented that it was impossible for him to inter-
fere in a matter which would bring him in collision with

THE NORMANS IN SICILY.

his nephew j1 but, ultimately, he not only took the Amalfifans
under his protection, but in the prosecution of their cause con-
trived also to deprive his nephew of Salerno. In possession
of Salerno, he made an attempt upon Naples, and was so far
carried away by his ruling passion as to attack Benevento and
incur excommunication ; but he had taken care to found so
many churches and convents, and to carry such frequent and
magnificent oblations to the shrine of St. Benedict, that, at the
intercession of the Abbot of Monte Casino, the resentment of
the Pope was easily appeased.

A new and a far more brilliant field was now opened before
him by the turn which affairs had taken at Byzantium. In
1074 Guiscard had given his eldest daughter in marriage to
Constantine, the son of the emperor Michael. Six years after-
wards, Nicephorus Botoniates had succeeded in dethroning
Michael, and had usurped his throne. Michael applied to
Guiscard for assistance. In the meantime Nicephorus had
been himself dethroned by Alexis, who did all in his power to
conciliate the Duke of Calabria. But Guiscard was not to be
diverted from an undertaking for which his daughter’s wrongs
furnished a pretext, and which opened to the boundless ambi-
tion of the Norman adventurer the contingency of an imperial
diadem. Collecting his forces he passed over into Epirus, and a.b.
in October, 1081, near Durazzo, so completely demolished the 1081
Byzantine army, that the emperor Alexis, who commanded
in person, with difficulty saved himself by flight. At this critical
moment arrived ambassadors from Rome to inform Guiscard
that the Pope, whom he had sworn to defend, was besieged
by the emperor Henry IV. in the tower of Crescentius, and
claimed his assistance. Guiscard, after some hesitation, con-
sidered it would ultimately be to his disadvantage if lie aban-
doned the Pope ; and leaving his son Boemond at Durazzo,
and summoning his brother, the Count, from Sicily, to watch
over his interests in Calabria, he marched to Rome, released
Gregory VII. from his thraldom, and carried him in triumph to
the Lateran. Henry IV. had thought it prudent to withdraw.

1 Whether his nephew or his brother-in-law is not quite clear. Robert’s
wife was Sicelgaita, sister to Gisulfo II. prince of Salerno, and this formed
the connexion.

L 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

idS

The son of Tancred de Hauteville might now boast that he had
defeated the emperor of the East and overawed the emperor
of the West.

But the Romans, who had sided with the Emperor, on the
third day after the rescue of the Pope suddenly fell upon the
Normans. Either to save his soldiers, or to gratify his revenge,
the Duke of Calabria lighted, on that occasion, the flames of
that conflagration the traces of which are to this day so exten-
sively seen. Half of Rome was reduced to ashes, and ruined
walls and deserted regions still indicate the path of the ruth-
less Guiscard.

In the meantime Boemond (the son of Robert) had been
gaining victory after victory in Epirus and Thessaly, till the
emperor Alexis, perceiving that the Greeks had no chance
with the Normans, resolved to hazard no more pitched battles,
and himself withdrew to Byzantium. Discontents, however,
arose in the Norman army, under the walls of Larissa, which
obliged Boemond to return, for a time, to Calabria, and the
Emperor was able to induce the Venetians to come to his
assistance in the Adriatic. But no sooner had Guiscard
fulfilled his engagements with the Pope, than, with surprising
celerity, he organized another armament, and with 120 vessels
again crossed the Adriatic. It was not long before, in a naval
engagement, he obtained as complete a victory over the
combined fleet of the Greeks and the Venetians, by sea, as he
had before obtained over the Emperor by land. There were
now no more opponents to subdue. Nothing remained between
the Norman and the imperial throne ; when, having landed on
d. the coast of Cephalonia, Robert Guiscard was seized with a
85 burning fever, which in six days terminated his existence.

Such was the end of the most remarkable of the sons of
Tancred. No less a statesman than a general, endued with
a fearless spirit, a comprehensive mind, and an iron frame,
impelled by insatiable ambition, and restrained by none of the
finer feelings, he was formed to conquer nations, and carve his
way to thrones. But the chivalry of his character was debased
by an alloy of the barbarian, and although his army, when he
died, melted away like a wreath of snow, not a tear bedewed
his hearse. . . .

THE NORMANS IN SICILY

149

In the spring of the same year, 1085, the count Roger of
Sicily entered the harbour of Syracuse with a naval armament.

The squadron of the Saracenic emir, Ben Avert, was not of
inferior force. The battle was prolonged, and the result
uncertain, till the Count threw himself on board Ben Avert’ s
vessel. The Emir, who was already wounded, attempted to
escape from so redoubtable an assailant, and leaped into
another vessel \ but missing his aim, fell into the sea, and,
borne down by the weight of his armour, sank to rise no more.

The loss of their chief disheartened the enemy, and most
of their ships fell into the hands of the Normans. But the
Saracens within the city resolved to make a stout defence,
and for four months endured all the horrors of a siege. The
pinch of hunger at length compelled Ben Avert’s widow to
steal away at night with her children and her treasures, in a
bark which reached the fortress of Noto in safety. The
famished and abandoned Syracusans opened their gates to
the Normans.

The next year, the Count undertook the conquest of Castro
Giovanni and Girgenti. Both cities were under the rule of the
Saracen Chamut, who, thinking Girgenti the most secure, left
his wife and children at that place, and himself repaired to
Castro Giovanni. The Count, however, soon possessing him-
self of Girgenti, treated Chamut’s wife and children with the
utmost kindness. From thence, receiving the submissions of
other towns in his way, he proceeded to Castro Giovanni ; but
before he assaulted the place, he requested, and obtained, an
interview with the governor. Gratitude for the treatment which
his wife and children had experienced might, perhaps, soften
the heart of the Saracen ; but, at all events, the result of the
conference was, that Chamut expressed his wish to become
a Christian. He then relinquished Castro Giovanni to the
Count, and receiving from him in exchange a grant of land in
Calabria, passed the remainder of his days in the neighbour-
hood of Melito.

Nothing now remained in the hands of the Saracens, except
the strong fortresses of Noto and Butera. The Count had A. d.
begun the siege of Butera in the spring of 1088, when he 1088
heard of the arrival of Pope Urban II. at Traina.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

450

Urban II. was so largely indebted to the protection of the
Normans, that having been driven out of Rome by the
emperor Henry IV., and the anti-Pope of his creation, he had
found an asylum at Terracina, within the Norman territory.
The Count of Sicily he regarded as his most powerful friend,
and he was now anxious to obtain his advice in a matter
of great difficulty and delicacy. Urban had received a request
from the Byzantine emperor to assist in person at the council
about to be held at Constantinople, with a view to adjust the j
differences between the Greeks and the Latins. The opinion 5
of the Count decided Urban not to undertake a mediation
which was only likely to end in a wider breach. The con- !
ference then turned upon the affairs of the Sicilian Church,
and it is probable that on this occasion the Count obtained
those concessions which are, at this day, of so much advantage
to Sicily, and which Urban afterwards confirmed by his cele-
brated Bull.1 The Count, refusing to constrain the religious
opinions of his subjects, whether Greeks or Saracens, agreed
only to found Roman Catholic institutions, as also to place
Roman Catholic bishops in all the principal towns of Sicily,
but requested, in return, to receive the privileges of nomination
and investiture. The Pope got over the difficulty by appoint-
ing the Count and his successors hereditary legates of the
Roman see.

In the same year the Count, having had the misfortune to
lose his first wife, and not having any male legitimate offspring,
married Adelaide, the niece of Boniface, marquis of Montferat.
a. i>. The next year, Ben Avert’s widow offered to surrender the
io^9 fortress of Noto, on the condition of being permitted to retire
to Africa with her children and her treasures. To this pro-
position the Count joyfully assented, and in the spring of 1090
1090 (Butera having already submitted) Roger became master of the
last stronghold of the Saracens, twenty-eight years from the
time of his first landing at Messina.

The conquest of the island being thus concluded, the Count

1 In this Bull the Pope declares ‘ ‘ that never shall a legate be sent into
Sicily against the will of the Count and his heirs, and that such things as are
usually done by legates shall be done by the Count, or his heirs, as vice-
legates.”

THE NORMANS IN SICILY.

151

liberally distributed rewards amongst those by whom he had
been so gallantly assisted. Tancred, the son of William
Bras de Fer,1 became Count of Syracuse; Giordan, Roger’s
natural son, became Count of Noto ; William de Hauteville,
Robert de Lucy, and other distinguished Norman captains,
received other towns in fief ; and the feudal system was
established in Sicily.

The following year the indefatigable Count, after having
assisted his nephew (William II.), the Duke of Calabria,2 to quell
a revolt in Apulia, fitted out an expedition, and took the islands
of Malta and Gozo. All his objects of territorial aggrandise-
ment were now accomplished. The Norman adventurers who,
a few years before, had left France with no inheritance but their
swords, were in possession of more than constitutes the modern
kingdom of Naples. . . .

The conqueror of Sicily might now have hoped to have
passed his few remaining years in peace ; but, to the end of his
life, he was kept on the alert by the necessities of his nephew,
who was ill able to govern Calabria by himself. In 1096 the a. p.
Count crossed the straits, to assist the Duke of Calabria in 1096
putting down a rebellion at Amalfi. Half his force consisted
of Saracens, who fought side by side with the Normans, and
were almost the only troops who accompanied the Count back
to Sicily ; for his Normans, carried away by the enthusiasm of
the times, left him in such great numbers to join the Crusaders,
that, for the first time in his life, he was obliged to relinquish
his enterprise. In 1098 he again repaired to Calabria, to reduce 1098
Capua to obedience, and, at nearly seventy years of age,
astonished the most youthful warriors by the vigour of his
powers, both of body and mind. In return for his services, the
Duke of Calabria made over to him the jurisdiction of half the
city of Palermo.3

Having again gone to Calabria, on a similar errand, in 1101, noi

1 Roger’s elder brother, the first Count of Apulia.

2 Son of Robert Guiscard. He died in a few years without children, and
Roger II., the son of the great count Robert of Sicily, claimed the succession,
and subsequently obtained the title of King of the Two Sicilies. — E. M. S.

3 Which Robert Guiscard had reserved to himself, when his brother Roger
established himself in Sicily. — C. M. Y.

*52

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

the great Count (as he is usually called by the old writers)
fell sick, and died at Melito, lamented by all his subjects,
Normans, Lombards, Greeks, and Saracens.1

Over the various population by which Sicily was inhabited
Roger had presided with strict impartiality. All were governed
by their own laws : the Greeks by the Code of Justinian; the
Normans by the Coutoumier de Normandie ;2 and the Saracens
by the Koran. In consequence, during the reign of the Count,
all were contented, and all lived harmoniously together. It was
not till afterwards that the Saracens discovered they were a
conquered people. At this time four languages were commonly
used in Sicily, the Greek, the Latin, the Arabic, and the Norman.
All laws and deeds were published in three tongues, and Arabic
inscriptions were seen on the reverse of the coins.

Perhaps this is the place to inquire to what may be attributed
the astonishing triumphs of the Normans, as well over victorious
Saracens as over degenerate Greeks. The chroniclers may have
augmented the disproportion of numbers, but, making all due
allowance for such exaggerations, the achievements of the
Normans still appear almost miraculous, and even their
enemies testify that the charge of their cavalry was irresistible.
It was partly the armour in which they were encased, partly
the character of their antagonists, partly local jealousies : in
Calabria the enmity of the Lombards to the Greeks ; in Sicily
the enmity of the Greeks to the Saracens. But the causes of
their uniform success are chiefly to be found in the manly and
martial exercises to which the Normans were accustomed from
their earliest years ; in the chivalrous and adventurous spirit of
the age, which excited their minds ; and, above all, in that
confidence in self which makes the soldier invincible. Each
individual Norman was, in effect, a legion.3

1 On the death of Roger his eldest son, wSimon, was acknowledged Count
of Sicily. He was only ten years old, and died after a few years. His
younger brother (Roger II.) then inherited his dominions. Adelaide, the
widow of the great Count, governed Sicily during the minority of her two
sons.— E. M. S.

2 The code by which the Normans had reduced the feudal customs they
found in France to law. — C. M. Y.

3 Abridged from the Introductory Historical Notice, chapters i. ii. iii. iv.

i53

GREGORY VII.

A.D. IO48 1086.

{From “ Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography ” by the Right Hon. STR J.

Stephen, K.C.B.)

Except in the annals of Eastern despotisms, no parallel can
be found for the disasters of the Papacy during the century
and a half which followed the extinction of the Carlovingian
dynasty. Of the twenty-four Popes who during that period
ascended the Apostolic throne, two were murdered, five were
driven into exile, four were deposed, and three resigned their
hazardous dignity. ... Of these heirs of St. Peter, one entered
on his infallibility in his eighteenth year, and one before he
had seen his twelfth summer. One, again, took to himself a
coadjutor, that he might command in person such legions as
Rome then sent into the field. Another, Judas-like, agreed for
certain pieces of silver to recognise the Patriarch of Constan-
tinople as universal bishop. All sacred things had become
venal. Crime and debauchery held revel in the Vatican ;
while the afflicted Church, wedded at once to three husbands
(such was the language of the times), witnessed the celebration
of as many rival masses in the metropolis of Christendom. . . .
How, from this hotbed of corruption, the seeds of a new and
prolific life derived their vegetative power, and how, in an age
in which the Papacy was surrendered to the scorn and hatred
of mankind, the independence of the Holy See on the imperial
crown became first a practical truth, and then a hallowed
theory, are problems over which we may not now linger.
Suffice it to say, that in the middle of the eleventh century
Europe once more looked to Rome as the pillar and the
ground of the truth ; while Rome herself looked forth on a
ong chain of stately monasteries, rising like distant bulwarks
>f her power in every land which owned her spiritual rule.
)f these, Clugni was the foremost in numbers, wealth, and

154

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

a. o. piety; and at Clugni, towards the end of the year 1048, Bruno, ;
io48 the bishop of Toul, arrayed in all the splendour, and attended
by the retinue, of a Pontiff elect, demanded at once the hospi- j
tality and the homage of the monks. At the nomination
of the emperor Henry III., and in a German synod, he had
recently been elected to the vacant Papacy, and was now on
his way to Rome, to take possession of the chair of Peter. ^
Hildebrand, the prior of Clugni, was distinguished above all
his brethren by the holiness of his life, the severity of his self-
discipline, and by that ardent zeal to obey which indicates the
desire and the ability to command. He was then in the prime I
of manhood, and his countenance (if his extant portraits may
be trusted) announced him as one of those who are born to
direct and subjugate the wills of ordinary men. Such a con-
quest he achieved over him on whose brows the triple crown :
was then impending. An election made beyond the precincts '■
of the Holy City, and at the bidding of a secular power, wras I
regarded by Hildebrand as a profane title to the seat once
occupied by the prince of the Apostles. At his instance, j
Bruno laid aside the vestments, the insignia, and the titles of
the pontificate ; and, pursuing his way in the humble garb of a ,
pilgrim to the tomb of Peter, entered Rome with bare feet
and a lowly aspect, and with no attendants (or none discern-
ible by human sense) except the adviser of this political self-
abasement. To Bruno himself, indeed, was revealed the
presence of an angelic choir, who chanted in celestial har-
monies the return of peace to the long-afflicted people of
Christ. Acclamations less seraphic, but of less doubtful
reality, from the Roman clergy and populace, rewarded this
acknowledgment of their electoral privilege, and conferred on
1048 Leo IX. (as he was thenceforth designated) a new and, as j
he judged, a better title to the supreme government of the
Church.

The reward of the service thus rendered by Hildebrand was
prompt and munificent. He was raised to the rank of a
cardinal, and received the offices of sub-deacon of Rome
and superintendent of the church and convent of St. Paul.

The Pope and the Cardinal were not less assiduous to
soothe, than they had been daring to provoke, the resentment

GREGORY VIE

155

of the Emperor. Bruno became once more a courtier and a
pilgrim, while Hildebrand remained in Rome to govern the
city and the Church. The Pontiff thrice visited the German
court, bringing with him papal benedictions to Henry, and
papal censures on Henry’s rebellious vassals. So grateful and
so effective was the aid thus rendered to the monarch, that on
his last return to Italy Leo was permitted to conduct thither
a body of imperial troops, to expel the Norman invaders. of
the papal territory. At Civitella, however, the axes of Hum- a. ».
phrey and Robert, brothers of William of the Iron-hand, io53
prevailed over the sword and the anathemas of Peter. Whether
Hildebrand bore a lance in that bloody field is debated by his
biographers. But no one disputes that he more than divided
the fruits of it with the conquerors. To them were conceded
the three great fiefs of Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily. To the
Holy See was assigned the suzerainty over them. Humiliated
and broken-hearted by his defeat, Bruno pined away and died.

. . . Gebhard, bishop of Eichstadt, was selected by the discern-
ing Cardinal, as of all men the best qualified to succeed to the
vacant Papacy. Hildebrand represented to the Emperor that
the choice had been made from an anxious respect for his
feelings, and with a loyal desire to promote his interest and
his honour. The thoughtful German suggested many other
candidates, but Hildebrand had some conclusive objection to
each of them.

Gebhard became Pope, assumed the title of Victor II., 1055
adopted, even to exaggeration, the anti-imperial principles of
Hildebrand, and rewarded his services by a commission to act
as his legate a latere 1 in the kingdom of France. By Victor
this high employment was probably designed as an honourable
exile for a patron to whom he had contracted so oppressive a
debt of gratitude. But the new legate was not a man on
whom any dignity could fall as a mere unfruitful embellish-
ment. He cited before him the bishops and ecclesiastical
dignitaries subjected to his legatine power, and preferred
against the whole body one comprehensive charge of simony.

# 1 A latere , from the side. A legate a latere was an immediate coun-
cillor of the Pope delegated for some special purpose into a particular

kingdom.— -C. M. Y.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

JS6

. . . Popular applause followed the steps of the stern disciplina- |
rian ; and the wonder of the ignorant was soon rivalled by the 1
admiration of the learned and the great. Such was the fame j
of Hildebrand’s wisdom, that the claim of Ferdinand of
Castile to bear the title of Emperor of Spain was referred to
his arbitrament by the Spanish and the German sovereigns. j:
He decided that the imperial name and dignity belonged to j
Henry III. and his heirs, to the exclusion of every other
potentate. Ill had Henry divined the future ! Rashly had j|
he consented to hold the honours of his crown by the judicial ;
sentence of a man who within twenty years was to pluck that 1
crown, with every mark of infamy, from the brows of his only j
son and successor !

When that son ascended the throne of his progenitors, and
assumed the kingly title of Henry IV., he was yet a child.
Agnes, his widowed mother, became the regent of his dominions,
and Victor the guardian of his person. But the Pope soon
followed the deceased Emperor to the grave, and another election
placed the vacant tiara on the head of Frederick of Lorraine.

Frederick was the brother of Godfrey, who, in right of his
wife Beatrice, and during the minority of her daughter Matilda,
exercised the authority and enjoyed the title of Duke of
Tuscany. . . . The choice was, in appearance, the unpremedi-
tated result of a popular tumult. Frederick seemed to be
borne to the Apostolic throne by the acclamations of a Roman
mob, and to be seated there in a half-reluctant acquiescence
in their good pleasure. Some excuse was necessary for so
flagrant a disregard of the rights of the infant Emperor, and
the turbulent enthusiasm of the people was at least a specious
apology. But by what informing spirit the rude mass had
A D> been agitated was sufficiently disclosed by the first act of the
1059 new pontiff. He had scarcely assumed the title of Stephen IX.
before he conferred on Hildebrand the dignities of cardinal
archdeacon of Rome and of legate at the imperial court.

After a reign of eight months, Stephen, conscious of the
approach of death, left to the Romans his last injunction
to postpone the choice of his successor until the return
from Germany of this great dispenser of ecclesiastical promo-
tions. The command was obeyed. The Cardinal Archdeacon

GREGORY VII.

157

eappeared, bringing with him the consent of the Empress-
regent to the choice of Gerard, bishop of Florence, another
dherent of the ducal house of Tuscany. Gerard accordingly
scended the chair of St. Peter. Like each of his three a.d.
nmediate predecessors, he sat there at the nomination of T°5^
lildebrand, and, like each of them, he called, or permitted, his
iatron to become the one great minister of his reign and
.irector of his measures. At the instance of Hildebrand
Nicholas II. (so was he now called) summoned a council, at
diich was first effected, in the year 1059, a revolution the
irinciple of which, at the distance of eight centuries, still
ourishes in unimpaired vitality. It for the first time con-
srred on the College of Cardinals the exclusive right of voting
t papal elections. It set aside not only the acknowledged
ight of the Emperor to confirm, but the still more ancient
•rivilege of the Roman clergy and people to nominate their
ishop. . . . After rendering this service to the cause of sacer-
otal independence, Nicholas died. . . .

To obtain from the Empress-Regent an assent to the obser-
ance by the Sacred College of the new electoral law was the
rst object of the conclave which assembled after the death of
Nicholas, at the command of Hildebrand. At his instance an
ivoy was despatched to the imperial court, with the offer that
Le choice should fall on any ecclesiastic whom Agnes might
Dminate, if she would consent that the Cardinals alone should
Dpear and vote at the ceremonial. The compromise was in-
gnantly rejected. A synod of Imperialist prelates was con-
med at Basil, and by them Cadolous, bishop of Parma (the
;ular Honorius II.), was elevated to the vacant Papacy. To
is defiance Hildebrand and his brother cardinals answered
r the choice of Anselm, bishop of Lucca, afterwards known
history as Alexander the second of that name. After a brief 1061
it sanguinary conflict in the open field, each of the rival
>pes, at the mediation of Godfrey, duke of Tuscany, retired
)m Rome to his diocese, there to await the judgment of a
:ure council on their pretensions. But Alexander did not
it the city until he had acknowledged and rewarded the
■vices of the head and leader of his cause. Hildebrand now
:eived the office of Chancellor of the Holy See, the best and

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

153

the highest recompense which he could earn by raising others j
to supreme ecclesiastical dominion. Two successive councils
confirmed the election of Alexander, who continued, during
twelve years, to rule the Church with dignity, if not in peace.

The time had at length arrived when Hildebrand was to I
receive the high and hazardous reward which his unfaltering
hopes had so long contemplated, and his self-controlling policy
so often declined. Leo, Victor, Stephen, Nicholas, and j
Alexander, had each been indebted to his authority for the j
pontificate, and to his counsels for the policy with which it ji-
had been administered. Successively Cardinal Deacon, Arch- jj
deacon, Legate, and Chancellor of the Apostolic see, one f
height alone was yet to be scaled. In the great church of jl
the Lateran the corpse of Alexander was extended on the f
bier. A solemn requiem commended to the Supreme Judge
the soul of the departed, when the plaintive strain was broken
by a shout, which, rising as it seemed spontaneously and jj
without concert from every part of the crowded edifice, pro- 1
claimed that, by the will of the holy Peter himself the Car-
dinal Chancellor was Pope. From the funeral procession
Hildebrand flew to the pulpit. With impassioned gestures, |
and in a voice inaudible amidst the uproar, he seemed to be
imploring silence ; but the tempest was not to be allayed until
one of the cardinals announced, in the name of the Sacred
College, their unanimous election of him whom the Apostle
and the multitude had thus simultaneously chosen. Crowned i
d. with the tiara, and arrayed in the gorgeous robes of a Pope j
73 elect, Gregory VII. was then presented to the people. Their
joyous exultation and the pomp of the inaugural ceremonies
blended and contrasted strangely with the studied gloom and
the melancholy dirge of the funeral rites. . . .

The most unimpeachable decorum presided over the whole
. of the ceremonial that followed. Envoys between Italy and
Germany passed and repassed ; men of grave aspect insti-
tuted tedious inquiries ; solemn notaries attested prolix re-
ports ; and in due time the world was informed that, of his
grace and clemency, Henry, king of Germany and Italy, I
calling himself Emperor, had ratified the election of his
dearly-beloved Father, Gregory VII.: the world, meanwhile, well

GREGORY VII.

159

knowing that, despite the Emperor’s hostility, the Pope was
able and resolved to maintain his own, and that the Emperor
would, if possible, have driven the Pope from Rome as the
most dangerous of rebels and the most subtle of usurpers.

But Henry was ill prepared for such an effort. During the
first six years of his reign the affairs of his vast hereditary
empire had been conducted by his widowed mother. She was
formed to love, to reverence, and to obey. In an age less
rude, or in a station less exalted, her much long-suffering, her
self-sustaining dignity, and the tenderness of her gentle spirit,
might have enabled her to win the obedience of the heart.
But her mind was ductile, her conscience enfeebled by a
morbid sensibility, and her character formed by nature and by
habit for subservience to any form of superstitious terror. She
was surrounded by rapacious nobles whom no sacrifices could
conciliate, and by lordly churchmen who at once exacted and
betrayed her confidence. Though severely virtuous, she was
assailed by shameless calumnies. Her female rule was resented
by the pride of Teutonic chivalry, and fraud and violence
combined to inflict the deepest wound on her rights as a
sovereign and her feelings as a mother.

At Kaiserwerth, on the Rhine, Agnes and her son, then in
his thirteenth year, were reposing from the fatigues of an
imperial progress. A galley impelled by long lines of oars,
and embellished with every ornament which art and luxury
could command, appeared on the broad stream before them.
Attended by a train of lords and servitors, Anno, the arch-
bishop of Cologne, descended from the gallant barge, and
pressed the royal youth to inspect so superb a specimen of
aquatic architecture and episcopal magnificence. Henry gladly
complied, and as the rowers bent to their oars, he enjoyed
with boyish delight the rapidity with which one object after
another receded from his view, till, turning to the companions
Df what had hitherto seemed a mere holiday voyage, he read
.n the anxious countenances of the commanders, and the
vehement efforts of the boatmen, that he wras a prisoner, and
nore than ever an orphan. With characteristic decision he at
mce plunged into the water, and endeavoured to swim to
>hore ; but the toils were upon him. A confederacy formed

i6o

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

by the Archbishops of Cologne and Muntz, and supported by
the Dukes of Bavaria and Tuscany, consigned their young
sovereign to a captivity at once sumptuous and debilitating.
They usurped the powers and plundered the treasures of the
crown. They bestowed on themselves and their adherents
forests, manors, abbeys, and lordships. But to the future ruler
of so many nations they denied the discipline befitting his
age, and the instruction due to his high prospects. They
encouraged him, and with fatal success, to enervate by cease- J
less amusement, and to debase by precocious debauchery, a
mind naturally brave and generous. . . . The heart of youth
was never won by habitual indulgence. As Henry advanced
towards manhood, the Archbishops of Cologne and Muntz
discovered that they were the objects of his settled antipathy,
and that they had to dread the full weight of a resentment at
once just, vindictive, and unscrupulous. To avert that danger |
they transferred the charge of the royal youth to Adalbert, j
archbishop of Bremen, rightly judging that his skill in courtly
arts (for he had lived on affectionate terms with the deceased
Emperor) might enable him to win his pupil’s regard, but
erroneously believing that his ecclesiastical zeal (for it seemed
the master-passion of his soul) would induce him to employ
that advantage in the defence and service of the hierarchy.

Adalbert, whose life is written in the Church History of
Adam of Bremen, was a man whose character was so strangely i
composite, that .... according to the aspect in which he was ;
viewed he might with equal justice be regarded as a saint or a
man of pleasure, as a scholar or a courtier, as a politician or a s
wit Now washing the feet of beggars, eloquently expounding
Christian truth, or indignantly denouncing the sins of the rich
and the great, the shifting scene exhibited him amidst a throng
of actors, jugglers, and buffoons, or as the soul and centre of a
society where lords and ambassadors, prelates and priests of
low degree, met to enjoy his good cheer, to partake of his
merriment, and to endure his relentless sarcasms. At the very
moment when, with irresistible address, he was insinuating |
himself into the favour of some potent count or bishop, the I
approach of another dignitary would rouse him to bitter and
unmeasured invective. From the laughing playfellow of his

GREGORY VII.

161

companions, he would pass at once into their fierce assailant,
and then atone for the extravagance of his passion by a bounty
not less extravagant. But whether he preached or gave alms,
whether philosophy, or fun, or satire was his passing whim, he
still enjoyed one luxury which habit had rendered indispensable.
Parasites were ever at hand to confirm his own conviction, that
Adalbert of Bremen was an universal genius ; and that, under
his fostering care, the see of Bremen was destined to become
the northern capital of the universal Church. . . . Brightly
dawned on the young Henry the day which transferred the
charge of his person and of his education from the austere
Anno to the princely Adalbert. The Archbishop of Cologne
had rebuked the vices he indulged. The stouter conscience
of the Archbishop of Bremen stood in need of no such self-
soothing compromise. He fairly threw the reins on the neck
of his royal charge, who invoked the aid of young and
profligate companions in the use or the abuse of this welcome
indulgence. His tutors had sown the wind ; his people were
now to reap the whirlwind. Of the domestic life of the young
Emperor the dark tale recorded by the chroniclers of his age
would not be endured by the delicacy of our own. His public
acts might seem to have been prompted by the determination
to exasperate to madness the national pride, the moral sense,
and the religious feelings of his subjects. Yet even when they
were thus provoked, their resentment slumbered. A popular
address, a noble presence, and the indulgence so liberally
yielded to the excesses of the great, the prosperous, and the
young, gave scope for the full expansion of his crimes and
follies. At the Lateran the influence of his personal qualities
was unfelt. . . . Roused to a just indignation by the frequent
intelligence of a life so debauched and of a reign so impious,
Alexander cited the Emperor to appear at Rome, there to
answer in person to the Apostolic throne for the simony and
the other offences imputed to him. The voice was Alexander s
voice, but the hand was the hand of Gregory. . . . The citation
of Henry was issued in the name of the dying Pope, but none
doubted that this audacious act, then without a parallel in
distory, had been dictated by his stern and unrelenting coun-
cilor. When tidings reached the imperial court that the voice

x62

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

of the people and the votes of the cardinals had placed in
Gregory’s hands the mysterious keys and the sharp sword of
Peter, none doubted the near approach of the conflict which
was to assign the supreme dominion over the Christian world
either to the German sceptre or to the Roman crozier. . . .

With a life stained by no sensual or malignant crime, and
degraded by the pursuit of no ends exclusively selfish, Pope
Hildebrand yielded himself freely to the current of those
awful thoughts which have peopled the brain of each in turn
of the successors of Peter, the basest and the most impure of
them scarcely excepted. A mystery to himself, he had become
the Supreme Vicar of Christ on earth ; . . . . the viceroy to whom
had been entrusted by God Himself the care of interests, and
the dispensation of blessings and of curses, which, by com-
parison, reduced to inappreciable vanities all the good and
evil of this transitory world. Resolute as he was, he appears
to have trembled at the contrast between the weakness of his
human nature and the weight of these majestic responsibi-
lities. . . . Before his prophetic eye arose a vast theocratic state,
in which political and religious society were to be harmonized,
or rather were to be absorbed into each other. At the head
of this all-embracing policy, the Bishop of Rome was to assert
his legitimate authority over all the kings and rulers of the
earth, ... To the Emperor, the Kings, the Dukes, the Counts,
his feudatories, was to be entrusted a ministry altogether
subordinate and auxiliary to his. They were to maintain
order, to command armies, to collect revenues, to dispense
justice. But they were to hold their crowns or coronets at the
pleasure of the Autocrat, to justify to him the use of their
inferior authority, and to employ it in support of his power,
which, as it was derived from Heaven itself, could acknowledge
no superior, equal, or competitor on earth. But woe — such
woe as vengeance almighty and unrelenting could inflict — on
him who, wielding the pontifical sceptre in the sacred name
of Christ, should impiously use it in any spirit, or for any
ends, not in accordance with those awful purposes which once
made Christ Himself a sojourner among men !

Sublime as were the visions which thus thronged on the soul
of Gregory VII., and which still shed a glowing light over his

GREGORY Vli

163

three hundred and fifty extant letters, life was never, for a
single day, a state of mere visionary existence to him. Before
him lay the approaching struggle with Henry, with Honorius,
with the ecclesiastics of Lombardy, with the German people,
whose loyalty had so long survived the sorest provocation,
and even with many of the German prelates, who ascribed
to the successor of Charlemagne and of Otho the same rights
which these great monarchs had exercised over the Pontiffs of
an earlier generation. Nor was he unconscious that the way
for his theocracy must be paved by reforms so painful, as to
convert into inexorable antagonists a large number of those
, on whose attachment to his person and his laws he might other-
wise have most implicitly relied. . . .

From the most remote Christian antiquity the marriage of
clergymen had been regarded with the dislike, and their celibacy
rewarded by the commendation, of the people. Among the
ecclesiastical heroes of the first four centuries, it is scarcely
possible to point to one who was not, in this respect,
an imitator of Paul rather than of Peter. . . . But nature had
triumphed over tradition, and had proved too strong for
councils and for Popes. When Hildebrand ascended the chair
first occupied by a married Apostle, his spirit burned within him
to see that marriage held in her impure and unhallowed bonds
a large proportion of those who ministered at the altar. ... It
was a profanation well adapted to arouse the jealousy, not less
than to wound the conscience, of the Pontiff. Secular cares
suited ill with the stern duties of a theocratic ministry. Domestic
affections would choke or enervate that corporate passion, which
might otherwise be directed with unmitigated ardour towards
their chief and centre. Clerical celibacy, on the other hand,
would ... fill the world with adherents of Rome, in whom every
feeling would be quenched which could rival that sacred alle-
giance. . . . With such anticipations, Gregory, within a few weeks
from his accession, convened a council at the Lateran, and pro-
posed a law, not, as formerly, forbidding the marriage of priests,
but commanding every priest to put away his wife, and requiring
all laymen to absent themselves from any sacred office which
any wedded priest might presume to celebrate. Never was
legislative foresight so verified by the result. What the great

164

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Council of Nicea had attempted in vain, the bishops assembled
in the presence of Hildebrand accomplished, at his instance,
at once, effectually, and for ever. Lamentable, indeed, were the
complaints and bitter the reproaches of the sufferers. “ Were
the most sacred ties thus to be torn asunder at the ruthless 1
bidding of an Italian priest? Were men to become angels,
or were angels to be brought down from heaven to minister
among men?” Eloquence was never more pathetic, more
just, or more unavailing. Prelate after prelate silenced these
remonstrances by austere rebukes. Legate after legate arrived
with papal menaces to the remonstrants. . . . Mobs pelted,
hooted, and besmeared with profane and filthy baptisms the
unhappy victims of pontifical rigour. It was a struggle not
to be prolonged. Broken hearts pined and died away in
silence. Expostulations subsided into murmurs, and murmurs
were drowned in the general shout of victory. Eight hundred
years have since passed away. Amidst the wreck of laws,
opinions, and institutions, this decree of Hildebrand’s at this
day rules the Latin Church, in every land where sacrifices are
still offered on her altars. . . .

With this Spartan rigour towards his adherents Gregory
combined a more than Athenian address and audacity towards
his rivals and antagonists. So long as the monarchs of the
West might freely bestow on the objects of their choice the
sees and abbeys of their states, papal dominion could be but
a passing dream, and papal independency an empty boast, I
Corrupt motives usually determined their choice; and the
objects of it were but seldom worthy. Ecclesiastical dignities
were often sold to the highest bidder, and then the purchaser
indemnified himself by a use no less mercenary of his own
patronage ; or they were given as a reward to some martial
retainer, and the new churchman could not forget that he had
once been a soldier. The cope and the coat of mail were worn
alternately. The same hand bore the crucifix in the holy
festival and the sword in the day of battle. ... In the hands
of the newly-consecrated bishop was placed a staff, and on his
finger a ring, which, received as they were from his temporal
sovereign, proclaimed that homage and fealty were due to
him alone. And thus the sacerdotal Proconsuls of Rome

GREGORY VII.

165

became, in sentiment at least, and by the powerful obligation
of honour, the vicegerents, not of the Pontifex Maximus, but
of the Imperator.

To dissolve this irinodis necessitas of simoniacal preferments,
military service, and feudal vassalage, a feebler spirit would
have exhorted, negotiated, and compromised. To Gregory .it
belonged first to subdue men by courage, and then to rule them
by reverence. Addressing the world in the language of his
generation, he proclaimed to every potentate, from the Baltic
to the Straits of Calpe, that all human authority being holden
of the Divine, and God Himself having delegated His own
sovereignty over men to the Prince of the Sacred College,
a Divine right to universal obedience was the inalienable
attribute of the Roman pontiff, of whom, as the supreme earthly
suzerain, emperors and kings held their crowns, patriarchs
and bishops their mitres ; and held them not mediately through
each other, but immediately, as tenants in capite , from the one
legitimate representative of the great Apostle.

In turning over the collection of the epistles of Hildebrand,
we are everywhere met by this doctrine, asserted in a tone of
the calmest dignity and the most serene conviction. Thus he
informs the French monarch that every house in his kingdom
owed to Peter, as their father and pastor, an annual tribute of
a penny, and lie commands his legates to collect it in token
of the subjection of France to the Holy See. He assures
Solomon, the king of Hungary, that his territories are the
property of the Holy Roman Church. Solomon, being incre-
dulous and refractory, was dethroned by his competitor for the
Hungarian crown. His more prudent successor, Ladislaus,
acknowledged himself the vassal of the Pope, and paid him
tribute. To Corsica a legate was sent to govern the demesnes
of the Papacy in the island, and to recover the rest of it from
the Saracens. To the Sardinians an account was despatched
of Gregory’s title to their obedience, with menaces of a Nor-
man invasion if it should be withheld. On Demetrius, duke
of Dalmatia, we find him conferring the kingly title, reserving
a yearly payment of two hundred pieces of silver “to the
holy Pope Gregory and his successors lawfully elected, as
supreme lords of the Dalmatian kingdom.” Among the

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

visitors of Rome was a youth, described in one of these
epistles as son of the King of Russia. The letter informs the
sovereign so designated, that, at the request of the young
prince, the Pontiff had administered to him the oath of fealty :
to St. Peter and his successors, not doubting that “ it would be
approved by the king, and all the lords of his kingdom, since
the Apostle would henceforth regard their country as his
own, and defend it accordingly.’5 From Sweno, the Dane, he
exacted a promise of subjection. From the recently converted |
Polanders he demanded and received, as sovereign lord of
the country, an annual tribute of an hundred marks in silver.
From every part of the European continent bishops were
summoned by these imperial missives to Rome, and there were
either condemned and deposed, or absolved and confirmed in
their sees. In France, in Spain, and in Germany, we find his
legates exercising the same power ; and the correspondence
records many a stern rebuke, sometimes for their undue
remissness, sometimes for their misapplied severity. . . .

There was, however, in the case of the Normans, a memo-
rable exception. Robert, the Norman conqueror of Sicily, and
William, the Norman conqueror of England, steeped in blood
and sacrilege, were the most shameless and cruel of usurpers.
The groans and curses of the oppressed cried aloud for
vengeance against them. But the Apostolic indignation, though
roused by the active vices of the Emperor, and by the
apathetic depravity of Philip of France, had for these tyrants
no menaces of wrath, no exhortations to repentance. Robert
was embraced and honoured as the faithful ally of Rome:
William was addressed in the blandest accents of esteem and
tenderness. “ You exhibit towards us” (such is the style)

“ the attachment of a dutiful son, yea, of a son whose heart is
moved by the love of his mother. Therefore, my beloved son,
let your conduct be all that your language has been. Let
what you have promised be effectually performed.” The in-
junction was not disobeyed, for even of promises the grim
conqueror of the north had been sufficiently parsimonious.
As Duke of Normandy, he remitted to the Pope the amount
of certain dues. As King of England, he indignantly refused
the required oath of fealty. “ I hold my kingdom of God

GREGORY VIL

167

and of my sword ” was his stern and decisive answer. Some-
thing the papal legate dared to mutter of the worthlessness of
gold without obedience ; but the gold was accepted, and the
disobedience endured. These were not the days of John,
surnamed Lackland; and for Innocent HI. was reserved by
his great predecessor the glory of receiving, from an English
sovereign, on his bended knee, the crown which, while it
rested on the head of William, challenged equal honours
with the papal tiara. For concessions more favourable to his
hopes of unlimited dominion the Pontiff turned to a sovereign
whose crimes no triumphs had sanctified, and no heroism
redeemed.

Alexander’s citation had been despised by Ilenry, and was
not revived by Hildebrand. Every post from Germany brought
fresh proof that, without the use of weapons so hazardous, the
Emperor must, ere long, be reduced to solicit the aid of Rome
on such terms as Rome might see fit to dictate. Dark as were-
the Middle Ages, the German court had light enough (if we
may credit the chroniclers) to anticipate our own enlightened
Irish policy. The ancient chiefs of Saxony were imprisoned,
and their estates confiscated and granted to absent lords and
prelates. Tithe-proctors hovered like birds of prey over the
Saxon fields. A project was formed for driving the ancient
inhabitants into a Saxon pale, and for converting the land into
a great Swabian colony. Castles frowned on every height.
Their garrisons pillaged and enslaved the helpless people.
Alliances were formed with the Bavarian and the Dane to
crush a race hated for their former pre-eminence and despised
for their recent sufferings. Nothing was wanting to complete
the parallel but discord and dejection amongst the intended
victims.

Groaning under the oppressions and penetrating the designs
of their sovereign, the Saxons solicited for their leaders an
audience at Goslar. The appointed day arrived. The de-
puties presented themselves at the palace. Henry was engaged
at a game of hazard, and bade them wait till he had played
it out. A stern and indignant demand for justice repelled the
insult. A second time, in all the insolence of youth, Henry
returned a contemptuous answer. In a few hours be found

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

himself blockaded at his castle of Hartzburg by a vast assem-
blage of armed men, under the command of Otho of Nord-
heim, the Tell or Hofer of his native land.

Escaping with difficulty, the Emperor traversed Western
Germany to collect forces for crushing the Saxon insurgents.
But the spell of his imperial name, and of his noble presence,
was broken. The crimes of a defeated fugitive were unpar-
donable. His allies made common cause with the Saxons, 5
whom they had so lately leagued to destroy. Long repressed
resentment burst out in the grossest indignities against the
recreant sovereign. Unworthy to wear his spurs or his crown
(so ran the popular arraignment), he descended, at a step, from
the summit of human greatness to the condition of an outcast
from human society. A diet had been summoned for his
deposition. His sceptre had been offered to Rudolf of Swabia.

A few days more, and his crown, if not his life, would have
been forfeited, when an opportune illness, and a rumour of his
death, awakened among his subjects the dormant feelings of
attachment and compassion. Haggard from disease, abject in
appearance, destitute, deserted, and unhappy, he presented
himself to the citizens of Worms. The ebbing tide of loyalty
rushed violently back into its wonted channels. Shouts of
welcome ran along the walls. Every house-top rang with
acclamations. Women wept over his wrongs. Men-at-arms
devoted their lives, and rich burghers their purses, to his cause.
The diet was dissolved, Rudolf fled, and it remained for
Henry to practise, on his recovered throne, the lessons he
had learned in the school of adversity.

Those lessons had been unfolded and enforced by the
parental admonitions of Gregory. The royal penitent answered
by promises of amendment, “ full ” (as the Pope declared) “ of
sweetness and of duty.” Nor was this a mere lip-homage. To
prove his sincerity, he abandoned to the Pope the government
of the great see and city of Milan, the strongest hold of
the Imperialists in Italy. A single desire engrossed the heart
of Henry. No sacrifice seemed too costly which might enable
him to inflict an overwhelming vengeance on the Saxon people ,*
no price excessive by which he could purchase the aid, or at
least the neutrality, of Hildebrand in the impending struggle.

GREGORY VII.

169

The concessions were accepted by the Pope, the motive under
stood, and the equivalent rendered. With gracious words to
the Emperor and to Rudolf, with pacific counsels and vague
promises to the Saxons, Hildebrand retired from all further
intervention in a strife of which it remained for him to watch
the issue and to reap the advantage.

It was in the depth of a severe winter that Henry, hoping
to surprise the insurgents, marched from Worms at the head
of forces furnished by the wealth and zeal of that faithful city.
Drifts of snow obstructed his advance. The frozen streams
could no longer turn the mills on which he depended for sub-
sistence. Meteors blazed in the skies, and the dispirited
soldiers trembled at such accumulated omens of disaster. In
that anxious host one bosom alone was heedless of danger,
and unconscious of suffering. He who had hitherto been
known only as a profligate and luxurious youth, now urged
on his followers through cold, disease, and famine, to the
Saxon frontier. But there Otho awaited him at the head of a
large and well-disciplined army. The Imperialists declined
the unequal encounter. Again Henry was reduced to capitu-
late. Humbled a second time before his subjects, he bound
himself to dismantle his fortresses, to withdraw his garrisons,
to restore the confiscated fiefs, to confirm their ancient Saxon
privileges, and to grant an amnesty unlimited and universal.

The Treaty of Gerstungen (so it was called) was dictated by
animosity and distrust, and was carried into execution by the
conquerors in the spirit of vindictive triumph. They expelled
from his residence at Goslar their dejected King and his house-
hold, and destroyed the town of Hartzburg with his royal
sepulchre, where lay the bones of his infant son, and of others
of his nearest kindred. The graves were broken open, and
their ghastly contents exposed to shameful and inhuman con-
tumelies— a wild revenge, and a too plausible pretext for a
fearful and not distant retribution.

Henry returned to his Rhenish provinces to meditate ven-
geance. Reckless of any remoter danger in which the indul-
gence of that fierce passion might involve him, he invoked the
arbitrament of the Pope, and called on him to excommunicate
the sacrilegious race who had burned the church and desecrated

i7o

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

the sepulchres of his forefathers. Gregory watched the gather-
ing tempest of civil war, received the appeals of the contending
parties, and answered both by renewed injunctions of obedience
to himself. To the Saxons he sent homilies ; to the Emperor
an embassy, graced by the name and the presence of his mother,
Agnes. She bore a papal mandate to her son to enforce the
celibacy of the clergy, and to restore to its lawful channels
the patronage of the Church. Henry promised obedience.
The legates then convoked a national synod, to be held in
Germany under their own presidency. To this encroachment,
also, Henry submitted. A remonstrance against it from the
Archbishop of Bremen was answered by a legatine sentence
suspending him from his see. Still the Emperor was passive.
Another sentence of the papal ambassadors exiled from the
court and presence of Henry five of his councillors, whom
Alexander had excommunicated. No signal resistance was
given by their insulted sovereign. Edicts for the government
of the Teutonic Church were promulgated without the usual
courtesy of asking his concurrence. They provoked from him
no show of resentment. Their work accomplished, the legates
returned from Rome, the messengers of successes over the
authority of the Cmsar more important than any former Pope
had ventured to anticipate. Applause, honours, and prefer-
ments rewarded the associates of Agnes, while to herself were
given assurances of celestial joy, and of a distinguished place
among the choristers of heaven.

The less aspiring son fed his mind with hopes of vengeance,
rendered, as he thought, more sure by all his concessions to the
Roman Pontiff. Twice, indeed, he had recoiled ignominiously
from the Saxon frontier. But from defeat itself he might draw
the means of victory. By the great feudatories of the empire
the spectacle of armed peasants and wealthy burghers imposing
terms of peace on the successor of Charlemagne had been
regarded with proud scorn and indignation. They resented
the rising fame and influence of Otho. He and his followers
might become strong enough to resume by arms the estates
they had lost by confiscation. Rumours were already rife of
such designs. To fan these flames and deepen these alarms,
and thus to excite among restless chiefs and predatory bands

GREGORY VII.

171

the appetite for war and plunder, became the easy and successful
labour of the impatient Emperor. At Henry’s summons, the
whole strength of Germany was collected on the Elbe to crush,
m his quarrel, the power they had so lately aided to depose
him. There were to be seen the crucifix of the Abbot of
Fulda, and there the sacred banner of the Archbishop of
Mentz. There Guelph, the Bavarian, raised his ducal standard
to reconquer the broad lands restored to their former owners
by the Treaty of Gerstungen. There, surrounded by the chivalry
of Lorraine, and restored by the Emperor to that forfeited
principality, Godfrey repaid the boon by the desertion of the
alliance, conjugal as well as political, which bound him to the
house of Tuscany. There appeared the King of Hungary,
lured by the hope of new provinces to be assigned to him on
the dismemberment of Saxony. And there, in the centre of
countless pennons, came Rudolf, to prove his loyalty to the
prince whose throne he had so recently endeavoured to
usurp.

The tide of war rolled on towards the devoted land. It had
been saved if penitence, humility, and prayer were of the same
power in the courts of earth as in those of heaven. It had
been saved if courage gathered from despair, and guided by
patriotism, could have availed against such a confederacy of
numbers and of discipline. But prayer was vain, and patriotism
impotent. A long summer’s day had reached its close, when,
under the command of their great leader Otho, the Saxon
lines approached the Unstrut. On the opposite banks of that
stream the Imperialists had already encamped. Neither army
was aware of the vicinity of the other, and Henry had retired
to rest, when Rudolf roused him with the intelligence that
the insurgent forces were at hand, unarmed, and heedless of
their danger, the ready prey of a sudden and immediate attack.
The Emperor threw himself in a transport of gratitude at the
eet of his advisers, and, leaping on his horse, led forward his
'orces to the promised victory.

In this strange world of ours, tragedies, of which the dire plot
md dark catastrophe might seem to be borrowed from hell, are
lot seldom depicted by historical dramatists in colours clear
md brilliant as those which may be imagined to repose over

172

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

paradise. One of the mitred combatants has sung, and j
Lambert, the chronicler of Aschafnaburg, has narrated the
battle of the Unstrut. . . . His picture of the field glows with
his own military ardour, and is thronged with incidents and
with figures which might well be transferred to the real canvas.
Among them we distinguish the ill-arranged Saxon lines, broken,
dying, and again forming at the voice of Otho, asdt rises above
the tumult, and then rushing after him, with naked swords and
naked bosoms, on the main battle of the triumphant invaders.
And still the eye follows Otho, wherever there are fainting ;
hearts to rally or a fierce onslaught to repel; — and we seem jj
almost to hear the shrill war-cry of the Swabians from the van jj
of the imperial host, where, by a proud hereditary right, they J
had claimed to stand; — and Rudolf their leader, the very I
minister of death, is ever in the midst of the carnage, himself, |
as if in covenant with the grave, unharmed ; — and in the agony - j
and crisis of the strife Henry, the idol to whom this bloody |
sacrifice is offered, is seen in Lambert’s battle-piece leaping, at
the head of his reserve, on his exhausted enemies, sweeping
whole ranks into confused masses, and, amid shrieks and
groans, and fruitless prayers and fruitless curses, immolating
them to his insatiable revenge.

The sun went down on that Aceldama amidst the exultations
of the victorious allies. It rose on them the following morning
agitated by grief, by discord, and by disaffection. Many nobles
who had fought the day before under the imperial banner were
stretched on the field of battle. The enthusiasm of the Saxons
had proved at how fearful a price, if at all, the selfish ends of
the confederacy must be attained. They mourned the extinc-
tion of one of the eyes of Germany. Silently but rapidly the
armament dissolved. Godfrey alone remained to prosecute the
war. With his aid it was brought by Henry to a successful
issue. A capitulation placed Otho and the other leaders in the
Emperor’s power. With their persons secured, their estates
forfeited, and their resources destroyed, he returned to join
with the loyal citizens of Worms in chanting the Te Deum
Laudamus. The same sacred strain had but a few days before
celebrated at Rome a still more important and enduring
victory.

GREGORY VII.

*73

Gregory had rightly judged that, while the rival princes were
immersed in civil war, he might securely convene the princes of
the Church to give effect to designs of far deeper significance.
The long aisles of the Lateran were crowded with grave
canonists and mitred abbots, with bishops and cardinals, with
the high functionaries and the humble apparitors of the Papal
State. Proudly eminent above them all sat the Vicar and Vice-
gerent of the King of kings. Masses were sung, and homilies
were delivered, and rites were performed, of which the origin
might be traced back to the worship of the Capitoline Jove;
and then was enacted by the ecclesiastical senate a law not
unlike the most arrogant of those which eleven centuries before
had been promulgated in the Capitol. It forbade the kings and
rulers of the earth to exercise their ancient right of investiture
of any spiritual dignitary, and transferred to the Pope alone a
patronage and an influence more than sufficient to balance,
within their own dominions, all the powers of all the monarchs
of Christendom. In the darkest hours of imperial despotism
the successors of Julius had never enjoyed or demanded an
authority so wide or so absolute. Even the daring spirit by
which the decree had been dictated drew back from the
immediate publication of it. The Pope intimated to the Ger-
man court and prelates the other acts of the Council, but
passed over in silence the great edict for which they had been
assembled, and by which they were to be immortalized. It
reposed in the Papal Chancery as an authority to be invoked
at a more convenient season, and in the meantime as a text
for the rulers of the earth to ponder, and for the learned to
interpret. To Hildebrand it belonged neither to expound nor
to threaten, but to act.

The Bishop of Lucca was dead ; the Pope nominated his
successor. The Bishop of Bamberg was accused of simony;
the Pope suspended him. The Archbishop of Bremen still
denied the right of papal legates to preside in a German synod ;
the Pope deprived him of his see, and of the Holy Sacraments.
The Bishops of Pavia, Turin, and Placentia adhered to Hono-
rius ; the Pope deposed them. Henry’s five exiled councillors
gave no signs of repentance ; the Pope again excommunicated
them. The Normans invaded the Roman territory ; the Pope

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

assailed them by a solemn anathema. Philip of France
continued to indulge himself, and to pillage every one else ;
the Pope upbraided and menaced him. Thus, with male-'
dictions sometimes as deadly as the Pontine miasma, sometimes;
as innocuous as the Mediterranean breeze, he waged war with
his antagonists, and exercised in reality the powers which he
yet hesitated to assert in words.

To the conqueror of Saxony these encroachments and
anathemas of the Pontiff appeared more offensive than
formidable. He retaliated rather by scorn than by active ,
hostility. He heaped favours on his own excommunicated
councillors, sent one of his chaplains to ascend the vacant ;
episcopal throne of Lucca, nominated an obscure and scan-
dalous member of his own household for the princely mitre
of Cologne, and forbade his Saxon subjects to appeal to
Rome, even in cases exclusively ecclesiastical. To Henry the |
Pontiff seemed an angry, arrogant, vituperative old man, best (
to be encountered by contempt. To Gregory the Emperor I
appeared as the feeble and unconscious agent in a providential
scheme for subjecting the secular to the spiritual dynasty. To
such as could read the signs of the times it was evident that,
on either side, this contempt was misplaced, and that a long
and sanguinary conflict drew near, by which the future des-
tinies of the world would be determined.

Events hurried rapidly onward to that crisis. Complaints
were preferred to the Holy See of crimes committed by Henry
against the Saxon Church which cried for vengeance, and of
vices which rendered him unfit for communion with his fellow-
Christians. Gregory cited the Emperor to appear before him
to answer these charges. The Emperor, if we may believe the
papal historians, answered by an attempt to assassinate the
author of so presumptuous a citation.

On Christmas Eve, in the year 1075, the city of Lome was
visited by a dreadful tempest. Not even the full moon of
Italy could penetrate the dense mass of superincumbent clouds.
Darkness brooded over the land, and the trembling spectators
believed that the day of final judgment was about to dawn.
In this war of the elements, however, two processions were
seen advancing to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. At

GREGORY VII.

175

the head of one was the aged Hildebrand, conducting a few
priests to worship at the shrine of the Virgo Deipara. The
other was proceeded by Cencius, a Roman noble. His fol-
lowers were armed as for some desperate enterprise. At each
pause in the roar of the tempest might be heard the hallelujahs
of the worshippers, or the voice of the Pontiff pouring out
benedictions on the little flock which knelt before him, when
the arm of Cencius grasped his person, and the sword of some
yet more daring ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead.
Bound with cords, stripped of his sacred vestments, beaten,
and subjected to the basest indignities, the venerable minister
of Christ was carried to a fortified mansion within the walls of
the city, again to be removed at daybreak to exile or to death.
Women were there with women’s sympathy and kindly offices,
but they were rudely put aside, and a drawn sword was already
aimed at the Pontiff’s bosom, when the cries of a fierce multi-
tude threatening to burn or batter down the house arrested
the arm of the assassin. An arrow, discharged from below,
reached and slew him. The walls rocked beneath the strokes
of the maddened populace, and Cencius, falling at his pri-
soner’s feet, became himself a suppliant for pardon and for
life.

In profound silence and undisturbed serenity, Hildebrand
had thus far submitted to these atrocious indignities. The
occasional raising of his eyes towards heaven alone indicated
his consciousness of them. But to the supplication of his
prostrate enemy he returned an instant and a calm assurance
of forgiveness. He rescued Cencius from the exasperated
besiegers, dismissed him in safety and in peace, and returned,
amidst the acclamations of the whole Roman people, to com-
plete the interrupted solemnities of Santa Maria Maggiore.

That Henry instigated this crime is an accusation of which
no proof is extant, and to which all probabilities are opposed.
But such a belief was current at the time, and the contest
thenceforward assumed all the bitterness of personal animo-
sity. To the charges of sacrilege, impurity, and assassination
preferred against the Emperor, his partisans answered by
denouncing the Pope himself, at a synod convened at Worms,
as base-born, and as guilty of murder, simony, necromancy,

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

176

and devil-worship, of habitual though concealed profligacy,
and of impious profanation of the Eucharist. Fortunately
for the fame of Gregory, his enemies have written a book.
Cardinal Benno, one of the most inveterate of them, has
bequeathed to us a compendium of all those synodal invec-
tives. The guilt of a base birth is established, for Hildebrand’s
father was a carpenter in the little Tuscan town of Saone.
The other imputations are refuted by the evident malignity of
the writer, and by the utter failure or the wild extravagance
of his proofs.

Such, however, was not the judgment of the Synod of
Worms. A debate, of two days’ continuance, closed with an
unanimous vote that Gregory VII. should be abjured and
deposed. Henry first affixed his signature to the act of
abjuration. Then each Archbishop, Bishop, and Abbot, rising
in his turn, subscribed the same fatal scroll. Scarcely was the
assembly dissolved, before imperial messengers were on their
way to secure the concurrence of other churches, and the sup-
port of the temporal princes. On every side, but especially in
Northern Italy, a fierce and sudden flame attested the long
smouldering resentment of the priests whom the Pope had
divorced from their wives ; of the lords whose simoniacal traffic
he had arrested ; of the princes whose Norman invaders he had
cherished ; of the ecclesiastics whom his haughty demeanour
had incensed ; of the licentious whom his discipline had
revolted ; and of the patriotic whom his ambition had alarmed.
... It was now the second week in Lent, in the year 1076.
From his throne, beneath the sculptured roof of the Vatican,
Gregory, arrayed in the rich mantle, the pall, and the other
mystic vestments of pontifical dominion, looked down the far-
receding vista of the sacred edifice on the long array of
ecclesiastical lords and princes before whom “ Henry, king of
Germany and Italy, calling himself Emperor,” had been sum-
moned to appear, not as their sovereign to receive their
homage, but as a culprit to await their sentence. As he gazed
on that new senate, asserting a jurisdiction so majestic, and
listened to harmonies which might not unfitly have accom-
panied the worship of Eden, and joined in anthems which in
far distant ages had been sung by blessed saints in their dark

GREGORY VII.

177

crypts, and by triumphant martyrs in their dying agonies, and
inhaled the incense symbolical of the prayers offered by the
Catholic Church to her Eternal Head ; what wonder if, under
the intoxicating influence of such a scene and of such an hour,
the old man believed that he was himself the Apostolic Rock
on which her foundations were laid, and that his cause and
person were sacred as the will, and invincible as the power, of
heaven itself ! The Veni Creator was on the lips of the
papal choir, when Roland, an envoy from the synods of
Worms and Piacenza, presented himself before the assembled
hierarchy of Rome. His demeanour was fierce and his
speech abrupt. “The King and the united bishops, both
of Germany and Italy” (such was his apostrophe to the Pope),
“ transmit to thee this command : — Descend without delay
from the throne of St. Peter. Abandon the usurped govern-
ment of the Roman Church. To such honours none must
aspire without the general choice, and the sanction of the
Emperor.” Then addressing the conclave: — “To you,
brethren,” he said, “it is commanded, that at the feast of
Pentecost ye present yourselves before the King my master, to
receive a Pope and father from his hands. This pretended
pastor is a ravenous wolf.” A brief pause of mute astonish-
ment gave way to shouts of fury. Swords were drawn, and
the audacious herald was about to expiate his temerity with
his blood. But Gregory descended from his throne, received
from the hands of Roland the letters of the synods, and,
resuming his seat, read them, in a clear and deliberate voice,
to the indignant council. Again the sacred edifice rang with
a tempest of passionate invective. Again swords were drawn
on Roland, and again the storm was composed by the voice of
the Pontiff. He spake of prophecies fulfilled in the contu-
macy of the King and in the troubles of the faithful. He
issured them that victory would reward their zeal, or Divine
:onsolations soothe their defeat ; but whether victory or defeat
ihould be their doom, “ the time,” he said, “ had come when
he avenging sword must be drawn to smite the enemy of God
md of His Church.”

The speaker ceased, and turned for approbation, or at
-ast for acquiescence, not to the enthusiastic throng of

i78

ms TOXICAL SELECTIONS.

mitred or of armed adherents, but to one who, even in that
eventful moment, divided with himself the gaze and the
sympathy of that illustrious assemblage. For by his side,
though in an inferior station, sat Agnes, the Empress-mother,
brought there to witness and to ratify the judgment pronounced
on her only child, whom she had borne amidst the proudest
hopes, and trained for empire beneath the griefs and anxieties
of widowhood. She bore, or strove to bear, herself as a daughter
of the Church, but could not forget that she was the mother of
Henry; when, in all the impersonated majesty of that holy!
fellowship, Hildebrand, raising his eyes to heaven, with a I
voice echoing, amidst the breathless silence of the synod, I
through the remotest arches of the lofty pile, invoked the holy
Peter, prince of the Apostles, to hear, and “ Mary the mother of
God,” and the blessed Paul, and all the saints to bear witness, A
while for the honour and defence of Christ's Church, in the j
name of the sacred Trinity, and by the power and authority §
of Peter, he interdicted to King Henry, son of Henry the
Emperor, the government of the 'whole realm of Germany [
and Italy, absolved all Christians from their oaths of allegiance
to him, and bound him with the bond of anathema ; “ that
the nations may know and acknowledge that thou art Peter,
and that upon thy rock the Son of the living God hath built
His Church, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.”

When intelligence of the deposition of Henry first astounded :
the nations of Europe, the glories of Papal Rome seemed to
the multitude to have been madly staked on one most preca-
rious issue. Men foretold that the Emperor would promptly
and signally punish a treason so audacious, and that the Holy
See would, ere long, descend to the level of the Patriarchate
of Constantinople. Nor did the wisest deem such anticipation
unreasonable. They reflected that Henry was still in the very
prime of life ; that he possessed a force of will which habitual
luxury had not impaired, and a throne in the hearts of the
people which the wildest excess of vice and folly had not
subverted ; that he reigned over the fairest and the wealthiest
portion of the Continent ; that he commanded numerous
vassals, and could bring into the field powerful armies ; that

GREGORY VIE

179

he had crushed rebellion among his subjects, and had no rival
to dread among his neighbours, and that the Papacy had
flourished upder the shelter of the imperial crown, the authority
of which had been so arrogantly defied, and the fierce resent-
ment of which was now inevitably to be encountered. But in
the seeming strength of the imperial resources there was an
inherent weakness, and in the seeming weakness of the papal
cause a latent but invincible strength. Even Teutonic loyalty
had been undermined by the cruelties, the faithlessness, and
the tyranny of the monarch, and the doom of the oppressor
was upon him. The cause of Gregory was, on the other hand,
in popular estimation, the cause of sanctity and of truth, of
primaeval discipline and traditionary reverence, and the Pope,
himself a martyr, who, in all the majesty of superhuman power,
was resolved either to repel the spoiler from the Christian fold
or to lay down his life for the sheep. That these high and
lofty purposes really animated the soul or kindled the imagi-
nation of him to whom they were thus ascribed, it would
be presumptuous to deny. But, whatever may have been his
reliance on the promises of Heaven, he certainly combined
with it a penetrating insight into the policy of earth. He
summoned to his aid his Norman feudatories, and invoked
the succour of his Tuscan allies. She who now reigned in
Tuscany might be supposed to have been called into being for
the single purpose of sustaining, like another Deborah or
Judith, the fainting hopes of another Israel.

On the death of Boniface, duke and marquis of Tuscany,
in 1054, his states descended to his only surviving child, who,
under the title of “ the Great Countess,” ruled there until her
own death in 1116, first in tutelage, then in conjunction with
her mother Beatrice, and during the last thirty-nine years of
that long period in her own plenary and undivided right.
Though she married Godfrey of Lorraine in her youth, and
Guelph of Bavaria in her more mature age, neither the wit and
military genius of her first husband, nor the wisdom and dignity
of his successor, could win the heart of Matilda. . . . She wras
in truth in love, but in love with the Papacy. Six aged P opes
successively acknowledged and rejoiced over her, as at once
the most zealous adherent of their cause, and the most devoted

N 2

i8o HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

worshipper of their persons. . . . In a voluptuous age, Matilda |
lived austerely, subduing her appetites, and torturing her natural |
affections with the perverse ingenuity which her ghostly coun- i
cillors inculcated and extolled. In a superstitious age, she 1
subdued her desire for the devotional abstractions of the
cloister, and with greater wisdom, and more real piety, com
secrated herself to the active duties of her princely office. In
an illiterate age, her habits of study were such that she j
could make herself intelligible to all the troops among whom
she lived, though levied from almost every part of Europe, and
especially to her Italian, French, and German soldiers, whose
tongues she used with equal facility. . . .

Warrior, ascetic, and scholar as she was, the spirit of |
Matilda was too generous to be imprisoned within the limits
of the camp, the cell, or the library. It was her nobler ambi-
tion to be the refuge of the oppressed, the benefactor of the j
miserable, and the champion of what she deemed the cause of j
truth. Mortifying the love of this world’s glory, she laboured I
with a happy inconsistency to render it still more glorious, j
At her bidding castles and palaces, convents and. ’Cathedrals, |
statues and public monuments, arose throughout Tuscany.
Yet, so well was her munificence sustained by a wise economy,
that to the close of her long reign she was still able to main-
tain her hereditary title to the appellation of “ the Rich,5’ by
which her father, Boniface, had been also distinguished. She
might, with no less propriety, have been designated as “the
Powerful,” since either by direct authority or by irresistible
influence she ruled nearly the whole of Northern Italy, from 1
Lombardy to the Papal States, and received from the other
monarchs of the West both the outward homage and the real :
deference reserved for sovereign potentates.

Matilda attained to the plenary dominion over her hereditary j
states at the very crisis of the great controversy of her age ;
when Henry had procured and promulgated the sentence of
the Synod of Worms for the deposition of Gregory. Heedless,
or rather unconscious, of the resources of that formidable
adversary, he had made no preparation for the inevitable
contest ; but, as though smitten by a judicial blindness, selected I
that critical moment for a new outrage on the most sacred

GREGORY VII.

feelings of his own subjects. He marched into Saxony; and
there, as if in scorn of the free German spirit, erected a stern
military despotism, confiscated the estates of the people,
exiled their nobles, imprisoned their bishops, sold the peasants
as slaves, or compelled them to labour in erecting fortresses,
from which his mercenary troops might curb and ravage the
surrounding country. The cry of the oppressed rose on every
side from the unhappy land. It entered into the ears of the
Avenger.

As Henry returned from this disastrous triumph to Utrecht,
the imperial banner floated over a vast assemblage of courtiers,
churchmen, vassals, ministers of justice, men-at-arms, and
sutlers, who lay encamped like some nomad tribe round their
chief ; when the indignant bearing of some of his followers,
and the alarmed and half-averted gaze of others, disclosed to
him the awful fact that a pontifical anathema had cast him
down from his imperial state, and exiled him from the society
of all Christian people. His heart fainted within him at these
dismal tidings as at the sound of his own passing bell. But
that heart was kingly still, and resolute either to dare or to
endure in defence of his hereditary crown. Shame and sorrow
might track him to the grave, but he would hold no council
with despair. The world had rejected him — the Church had
cast him out — his very mother had deserted him. In popular
belief, perhaps in his own, God Himself had abandoned' him.
Yet all was not lost. He retained, at least, the hope of
vengeance. On his hated adversary he might yet retaliate
blow for blow, and malediction for malediction.

On Easter Day, in the year 1076, surrounded by a small and
anxious circle of prelates, William, the archbishop of Utrecht,
ascended his archiepiscopal throne, and recited the sacred
narrative which commemorates the rising of the Redeemer
from the grave. Bnt no strain of exulting gratitude followed.
A fierce invective depicted in the darkest colours the character
and the career of Hildebrand, and with bitter scorn the
preacher denied the right of such a Pope to censure the
Emperor of the West, to govern the Church, or to live in her
communion. In the name of the assembled synod he then
pronounced him excommunicate.

A. IX

IO76

182

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

At that moment the summons of death reached the author of
this daring defiance. While the last fatal struggle convulsed
his body, a yet sorer agony affected his soul. He died self-
abhorred, rejecting the sympathy, the prayers, and the sacra- I
ments with which the terrified bystanders would have soothed
his departing spirit. The voice of heaven itself seem to rise
in wild concert with the cry of his tortured conscience. Thun- 1
derbolts struck down both the church in which he had abjured
the Vicar of Christ and the adjacent palace in which the
Emperor was residing.

Three other of the anti-papal prelates quickly followed I
William to the grave, by strange and violent deaths. Godfrey
of Lorraine fell by the hand of an assassin. These facts, though
recorded by the contemporary chroniclers, will of course be
received in our own times with the scepticism wdiich has been
deeply impressed on all modern readers of historical marvels. !
But there can be no doubt that the belief in these accumulated !
portents was everywhere diffused, and awakened universal i'
horror. Each day announced to Henry some n ew secession. His '
guards deserted his standard ; his personal attendants avoided !
his presence. . . . Otho appeared once more in arms to lead
a new insurrection of his fellow-countrymen. The great princes i
of Germany convened a council to deliberate on the deposition
of their sovereign. To every eye but his own all seemed to
be lost. Even to him it was but too evident that the loyalty
of his subjects had been undermined, and that his throne was
tottering beneath him. A single resource remained. He might 1
assemble the faithful, or the desperate, adherents of his cause,
inspire dread into those whose allegiance he had forfeited, :
make one last strenuous effort in defence of his crown, and
descend to the tomb, if so it must be, the anointed chief of the
Carlo vingian empire.

With a mind wrought up to such resolves, he traversed the
north of Germany to encounter the Saxon insurgents, published
to the world the sentence of Utrecht, and called on the Lom-
bard bishops to concur in the excommunication it denounced.
He reaped the usual reward of audacity. Though repelled by
Otho, and compelled to retrace his march to the Rhine, he
found every city, village, and convent by which he passed

GREGORY VIE

distracted with the controversy between the Diadem and the
Tiara. Religion and awakening loyalty divided the empire.
Though not yet combining into any definite form, the elements
of a new confederacy were evidently at work in favour of a
Monarch who thus knew how to draw courage and energy from
despair.

Yet the moral sentiment of the German people was as yet
anequi vocally against their sovereign. The Imperialists mourn-
fully acknowledged that their chief was justly condemned. The
Papalists indignantly denied the truth of the reproaches cast
on their leader. In support of that denial, Gregory defended
himself in epistles addressed to all the greater Teutonic
prelates. Among them is a letter to Herman, bishop of
Mentz, which vividly exhibits both the strength of the writer’s
character and the weakness of his cause. Although, he says,
such as, from their exceeding folly, deny the papal right of
excommunicating kings, hardly deserve an answer (the right to
depose kings was the real point in debate), yet, in condescen-
sion to their weakness, he will dispel their doubts. Peter
himself had taught this doctrine, as appeared by a letter from
St. Clement (in the authenticity of which no one believes).
When Pepin coveted the crown of Childeric, Pope Zachary
was invited by the Mayor of the Palace to give judgment
between them. On his ambiguous award the usurper had
founded the title of his dynasty. St. Gregory the Great had
threatened to depose any monarch who should resist his decrees.
The story of Ambrose and Thedosius, rightly interpreted, gave
proof that the Emperor held his crown at the will of the
Apostle. Every king was one of the “ sheep ” whom Peter
had been commanded to feed, and one of the “ things ” which
Peter had been empowered to bind. . . .

To employ good arguments one must be in the right. To
make the best possible use of such as are to be had is the
privilege of genius, even when in the wrong. Nothing could
be more convincing to the spiritual lords of Germany, nothing-
more welcome to her secular chiefs, than this array of great
names and sonorous authorities against their falling sovereign.
To overcome the obstinate loyalty of the burghers and peasantry
to their young and gallant King religious terrors were indis-

184

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

pensable, and continual reinforcements of pontifical denun-
ciations were therefore solicited and obtained. At length, in
the autumn of 1076, appeared from Rome a rescript which, in '
the event (no longer doubtful) of Henry’s continued resistance
to the sentence of the last papal council, required the German j
princes and prelates, counts and barons, to elect a new I
Emperor, and assured them of the Apostolical confirmation of
any choice which should be worthily made. These were no
idle words. The death-struggle could no longer be postponed.
Legates arrived from Rome to guide the proceedings of the
diet to be convened for this momentous deliberation. It met
during the autumn at Tribur.

The annals of mankind scarcely record so solemn or so dis-
dassionate an act of national justice. Some princely banner
waved over every adjacent height, and groups of unarmed soldiers
might be traced along the furthest windings of the neighbour-
ing Rhine, joining in the pleasant toils, and swelling the gay
carols, of the mature vintage. In the centre, and under the
defence of that vast encampment, rose a pavilion, within which
were collected all whose dignity entitled them to a voice in that
high debate. From the only extant record of what occurred,
and of what was spoken there, it may be inferred that Henry’s
offences against the Church were regarded lightly in comparison
with the criminality of his civil government. Stationed on the
opposite bank of the river, he received quick intelligence of
the progress and tendency of the discussion. The prospect
darkened hourly. Soldiers had already been despatched to
secure him, and his person was in danger of unknightly indig-
nities, which might for ever have estranged the reverence
borne to him by the ruder multitude, when he attempted to
avert the impending sentence of deposition by an offer to
abdicate all the powers of government to his greater feudatories,
stipulating for himself only that he should retain his imperial
title as the nominal head of the Teutonic empire.

Palpable as was the snare to the subtle Italian legates, the
simple-minded Germans appear to have nearly fallen into it.
For seven successive days speech answered speech on this
proposal; and when men could neither speak nor listen more,
the project of a nominal reign, shorn of all substantial authority,

GREGORY VII.

i8S

was adopted by the diet, but (in modern phrase) with amend-
ments obviously imposed by the representatives of the sacer-
dotal power. The Pope was to be invited to hold a diet at
Augsburg, in the ensuing spring. He was, meanwhile, to decide
whether Henry should be restored to the bosom of the Church.
If so restored, he was at once to resume all his imperial rights.
But if the sun should go down on him still an excommunicate
person on the 23d of February, 1077, his crown was to be
transferred to another. Till then he was to dwell at Spires,
with the title of Emperor, but without a court, an army, or a
place of public worship.

The theocratic theory, hitherto regarded as a mere Utopian
extravagance, had thus passed into a practical and sacred
reality. The fisherman of Galilee had triumphed over the
conqueror of Pharsalia. The vassal of Otho had reduced Otho’s
successor to vassalage. The universal monarchy which Heathen
Rome had wrung from a bleeding world had been extorted by
Christian Rome from the superstition or the reverence of man-
kind. . . . Strains of unbounded joy resounded through the
papal city. Solitude and shame and penitential exercises
attested the past crimes and the abject fortunes of the exile of
Spires.

But against this regimen of sackcloth and fasting the body
md the soul of Plenry revolted. At the close of the Diet
Df Tribur he had scarcely completed his twenty-sixth year.
Degraded, if not finally deposed, hated and reviled, abandoned
}y man and compelled by conscience to anticipate his abandon-
nent by God, he yet, in the depths of his misery, retained the
■emembrance and the hope of dominion. The future was still
>right with the anticipations of youth. He might yet retrieve
lis reputation, resume the blessings he had squandered, and
ake a signal vengeance on his great antagonist. And, amidst
he otherwise universal desertion, there remained one faithful
>osom on which to repose his own aching heart. Bertha, his
fife, who had retained her purity unsullied amidst the licence
>f his court, now retained her fidelity unshaken amidst the
fisehood of his adherents. Her wrongs had been such as to
ender a deep resentment nothing less than a duty. Her happi-
less and her honour had been basely assailed by the selfish

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

1 86

•profligate to whom the most solemn vows had in vain united |
her. But to her those vows were a bond stronger than death,
and indissoluble by all the confederate powers of earth and j
hell. To suffer was the condition, to pardon and to love the
necessity, of her existence. Vice and folly could not have
altogether depraved him who was the object of such inalienable j
tenderness, and who at length learnt to return it with a devo-
tion almost equal to her own, after a bitter experience had ||
taught him the real value of the homage and caresses of the f:
world.

In her society, though an exile from every other, Henry wore |
away two months at Spires in a fruitless solicitation to the Pope
to receive him in Italy as a penitent suitor for reconcilement
with the Church. December had now arrived, and in less than
ten weeks would be fulfilled the term when, if still excommuni- >
cate, he must, according to the sentence of Tribur, finally !
resign, not the prerogatives alone, but with them the title and
rank of Head of the empire. No sacrifices seemed too great
to avert this danger ; and history tells of none more singular
than those to which the heir of the Franconian dynasty was
constrained to submit. In the garb of a pilgrim, and in a |
season so severe as during more than four months to have
converted the Rhine into a solid mass of ice, Henry and his
faithful Bertha, carrying in her arms their infant child, undertook
to cross the Alps, with no escort but such menial servants .as it
was yet in his power to hire for that desperate enterprise.
Among the courtiers who had so lately thronged his palace, not
one would become the companion of his toil and dangers.
Among the neighbouring princes who had so lately solicited
his alliance, not one would grant him the poor boon of a safe
conduct and a free passage through their states. Even his
wife’s mother exacted from him large territorial cessions, as the
price of allowing him and her own daughter to scale one of the •
Alpine passes, apparently that of the Great St. Bernard. Day
by day peasants cut out an upward path through the long
windings of the mountain. In the descent from the highest
summit, when thus at length gained, Henry had to encounter
fatigues and dangers from which the chamois hunter would
have turned aside. Vast trackless wastes of snow were traversed,

GREGORY VII.

187

sometimes by mere crawling, at other times by the aid of rope-
ladders or still ruder contrivances, and not seldom by a sheer
plunge along the inclined steep ; the Empress and her child
Being enveloped on those occasions in the raw skins of beasts
slaughtered on the march.

The transition from these dangers to security, from the pine
forests, glaciers, and precipices of the Alps to the sunny plains
of Italy, was not so grateful to the wearied travellers as the
change from the gloom of Spires to the rapturous greetings
which hailed their advance along the course of the Po. A
splendid court, a numerous army, and an exulting populace,
once more attested the majesty of the Emperor ; nor was the
welcome of his Italian subjects destitute of a deeper significance
than usually belongs to the paeans of the worshippers of kings.
They dreamed of the haughty Pontiff humbled, of the see of
Ambrose exalted to civil and ecclesiastical supremacy, and of
the German yoke lifted from their necks. Doomed as were
these soaring hopes to an early disappointment, the enthusiasm
of Henry’s partisans justified those more sober expectations
which had prompted his perilous journey across the Alps. He
could now prosecute his suit to the Pope with the countenance
and in the vicinity of those zealous adherents, and at a secure
distance from the enemies towards whom Hildebrand was
already advancing, to hold the contemplated Diet of Augsburg.
In the personal command of a military escort, Matilda attended
the papal progress, and was even pointing out to her guards
their line of march through the snowy peaks which closed in
her northern horizon, when tidings of the rapid approach of
the Emperor at the head of a formidable force induced her to
retreat to the fortress of Canossa. There, in the bosom of the
Apennines, her sacred charge would be secure from any sudden
assault ; nor had she anything to dread from the regular leaguer
of such powers as could, in that age, have been brought to the
siege of it. Canossa was the cradle and the original seat of
her ancient race. It was also the favourite residence of the
Great Countess, and, when Gregory found shelter within her
halls, they were crowded with guests of the highest eminence
in social and in literary rank. So imposing was the scene, and
so superb the assemblage, that the drowsy muse of her versifying

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

1 88

chaplain1 awakened for once to an hyperbole, and declared i
Canossa to be nothing less than a new Rome, the rival of that
of Romulus. Thither, as if to verify the boast, came a long
line of mitred penitents from Germany, whom the severe
Hildebrand consigned on their arrival to solitary cells, with
bread and water for their fare; and there also appeared the
German Emperor himself, not the leader of the rumoured host
of Lombard invaders, but surrounded by a small and unarmed
retinue — mean in his apparel, and contrite in outward aspect,
a humble suppliant for pardon and acceptance to the com-
munion of the faithful. ... He well knew that to break the
alliance of patriotism, cupidity and superstition, which had
degraded him at Tribur, it was necessary to rescue himself
from the anathema which he had but too justly incurred, and
that his crown must be redeemed, not by force, but by submis-
sion to his formidable antagonist.

Environed by many of the greatest princes of Italy who j
owed fealty and allegiance to the Emperor, Gregory affected to
turn a deaf ear to Henry’s solicitations. His humblest efforts |
were spurned ; his most unbounded acknowledgments of the
sacerdotal authority over the kings and kingdoms of the world
were rejected. For the distress of her royal kinsman Matilda
felt as women and as monarchs feel ; but even her entreaties [
seemed to be fruitless. Day by day the same cold stern appeal ;
to the future decisions of the diet to be convened at Augsburg
repelled the suit even of that powerful intercessor. The critical I
point at which prayers for reconcilement would give way to
indignation and defiance had been almost reached. Then, and
not till then, the Pope condescended to offer his ghostly pardon,
on the condition that Henry would surrender into his hands the
custody of the crown, the sceptre, and the other ensigns of
royalty, and acknowledge himself unworthy to bear the royal
title. This, however, was a scandal on which not even the
proud spirit of the now triumphant priest dared to insist, and
to which not even the now abject heart of the Emperor could
be induced to submit. But the shame which was spared to the
sovereign was inflicted with relentless severity on the man.

i Donnizone. He wrote the life of the countess Matilda in Latin hexa-
meters.— E. M. S.

GREGORY VII.

189

It was towards the end of January. The earth was covered a.d.
with snow, and the mountain streams were arrested by the 1077
keen frost of the Apennines, when, clad in a thin penitential
garment of white linen, and bare of foot, Henry, the descendant
of so many kings, and the ruler of so many nations, ascended
slowly and alone the rocky path which led to the outer gate of
the fortress of Canossa. With strange emotions of pity, of
wonder, and of scorn, the assembled crowd gazed on his
majestic form and noble features, as, passing through the first
and the second gateway, he stood in the posture of humiliation
before the third, which remained inexorably closed against his
further progress. The rising sun found him there fasting ; and
there the setting sun left him, stiff with cold, faint with hunger,
and devoured by shame and ill-suppressed resentment. A
second day dawned, and wore tardily away, and closed, in a
continuance of the same indignities, poured out on Europe at
large in the person of her chief by the Vicar of the meek, the
lowly, and the compassionate Redeemer. A third day came,
and, still irreverently trampling on the hereditary lord of
the fairer half of the civilized world, Hildebrand once more
compelled him to prolong till nightfall this profane and hollow
parody on the real workings of the broken and contrite heart.

Nor was he unwarned of the activity and the strength of the
indignation aroused by this protracted outrage on every natural
sentiment and every honest prejudice of mankind. Lamen-
tations and reproaches rang through the castle of Canossa.
Murmurs from Henry’s inveterate enemies, and his own zealous
adherents, upbraided Gregory as exhibiting rather the cruelty
of a tyrant than the rigour of an Apostle. But the endurance
of the sufferer was the only measure of the inflexibility of the
tormentor; nor was it till the unhappy monarch had burst
away from the scene of his mental and bodily anguish, and
sought shelter in a neighbouring convent, that the Pope,
yielding at length to the instances of Matilda, would admit
the degraded suppliant into his presence. It was the fourth
day on tvhich he had borne the humiliating garb of an affected
penitent, and in that sordid raiment he drew near on his bare
feet to the more than imperial majesty of the Church, and
prostrated himself, in more than servile deference, before the

190

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

diminutive and emaciated old man, “ from the terrible glance
of whose countenance,” we are told, “ the eye of every be-
holder recoiled as from the lightning.” Hunger, cold, naked-
ness, and shame had, for the moment, crushed the gallant
spirit of the sufferer. He wept and cried for mercy, again and
again renewing his entreaties, until he had reached the lowest j
level of abasement to which his own enfeebled heart, or the!
haughtiness of his great antagonist, could depress him. Then, j
and not till then, did the Pope condescend to revoke the ||
anathema of the Vatican.

Cruel, however, were the tender mercies of the now exulting ;j
Pontiff. He restored his fallen enemy at once to the com- I
munion and to the contempt of his Christian brethren. The I
price of pardon was a promise to submit himself to the future |
judgment of the Apostolic see; to resign his crown if that f
judgment should be unfavourable to him; to abstain mean--
while from the enjoyment of any of his royal prerogatives or \
revenues ; to acknowledge that his subjects had been lawfully I
released from their allegiance ; to banish his former friends j
and advisers ; to govern his states, should he regain them, in \
obedience to the papal counsels; to enforce all papal decrees;
and never to revenge his present humiliation. To the ob-
servance of the terms thus dictated by the conqueror the
oaths of Henry himself, and of several prelates and princes as
his sponsors, were pledged ; and then, in the name of Him
who had declared that His kingdom was not of this world, and
as the successor of Him who had forbidden to all bishops any
lordship over the heritage of Christ, the solemn words of
pontifical absolution rescued the degraded Emperor from the
forfeit to which he had been conditionally sentenced by the
confederates at Tribur.

Another expiation was yet to be made to the injured majesty
of the Tiara. Pie in whom the dynasties of Caesar, of Charle-
magne, and of Otho had their representative, might still be
compelled to endure one last and galling contumely. Holding
in his hand the seeming bread, which (as he believed) words
of far more than miraculous power had just transmuted into
the very Body which died and was entombed at Calvary,

“ Behold !” exclaimed the Pontiff, fixing his keen and flashing

GREGORY VII.

191

eye on the jaded countenance of the unhappy monarch, “ be-
hold the Body of the Lord ! Be it this day the witness of my
innocence. May the Almighty God now free me from the
suspicion of the guilt of which I have been accused by thee
and thine, if I be really innocent ! May He this very day
smite me with a sudden death, if I be really guilty !” Amidst
the acclamations of the bystanders, he then looked up to
heaven, and broke and ate the consecrated element “ And
now,” he exclaimed, turning once more on the awe-stricken
Henry that eye which neither age could dim nor pity soften,
a if thou art conscious of thine innocence, and assured that the
charges brought against thee by thine own opponents are false
and calumnious, free the Church of God from scandal, and
thyself from suspicion, and take as an appeal to heaven this
Body of the Lord.”

That, in open contradiction to his own recent prayers and
penances, the penitent should have accepted this insulting
challenge, was obviously impossible. He trembled, and evaded
it. At length, when his wounded spirit and half-lifeless frame
could endure no more, a banquet was served, where, suppressing
the agonies of shame and rage with which his bosom was to
heave from that moment to his last, he closed this scene of
wretchedness by accepting the hospitalities, sharing in the
familiar discourse, and submitting to the benedictions of the
man who had in his person given proofs, till then unimagined,
of the depths of ignominy to which the Temporal Chief of
Christendom might be depressed by an audacious use of the
powers of her ecclesiastical head.

The Lombard lords who had hailed the arrival of their
sovereign in Italy, had gradually overtaken his rapid advance
to Canossa. There, marshalled in the adjacent valleys, they
anxiously awaited, from day to day, intelligence of what might
be passing within the fortress, when at length the gates were
thrown open, and, attended only by the usual episcopal retinue,
a bishop was seen to descend from the steep path which led
to their encampment. He announced that Henry had sub-
mitted himself to the present discipline and to the future
guidance of the Pope, and had received his ghostly absolution ;
and that, on the same terms, his Holiness was ready to bestow

192

HIS TO RICA L SELECTIONS.

the same grace on his less guilty followers. As the tidings of
this papal victory flew from rank to rank, the mountains echoed !
with one protracted shout of indignation and defiance. The
Lombards spurned the pardon of Hildebrand — an usurper of !
the Apostolic throne, himself excommunicated by the decrees
of German and Italian synods. They denied the authority !
of the Emperor, debased as he now was by concessions un-
worthy of a king, and by indignities disgraceful to a soldier.
They vowed to take the crown from his dishonoured head, to
place it on the brows of his son, the yet infant Conrad ; to
march immediately to Rome, and there to depose the proud I
Churchman who had thus dared to humble to the dust the
majesty of the Franconian line, and of the Lombard name.

In the midst of this military tumult the gates of Canossa
were again thrown open, and Henry himself was seen descend- -
ing to the camp, his noble figure bowed down and his lordly
countenance overcast with unwonted emotions. As he passed
along the Lombard lines, every eye expressed contempt, and
derision was on every tongue. But the Italian was not the Ger-
man spirit. They could at once despise and obey. Following
the standard of their degraded monarch, they conducted him
to Reggio, where, in a conclave of ecclesiastics, he instantly ?
proceeded to concert schemes for their deliverance and for his
own revenge.

Within a single week from the absolution of Canossa,
Gregory was on his way to Mantua to hold a council, to which
the Emperor had invited him, with the treacherous design (if
the papal historians may be credited) of seizing and imprison-
ing him there. The vigilance of Matilda rescued her Holy
Father from the real or imaginary danger. From the banks
of the Po she conducted him back, under the escort of her
troops, to the shelter of her native mountain fastness. His
faith in his own infallibility must have undergone a severe trial.
The imperial sinner he had pardoned was giving daily proof
that the heart of man is not to be penetrated even by papal
eyes. Henry was exercising, with ostentation, the prerogatives
he had so lately vowed to forego. Fie had cast off the abject
tone of the confessional. All his royal instincts were in full
activity. He breathed defiance against the Pontiff — seized and

GREGORY VII.

193

imprisoned his legates — recalled to his presence his excommu-
nicated councillors — became once more strenuous for his rights
— and was recompensed by one simultaneous burst of sympathy,
enthusiasm, and devotedness from his Italian subjects.

To balance the ominous power thus rising against him,
Gregory now received an accession of dignity and of influence
on which his eulogists are unwilling to dwell. The discipline
of the Church and the fate of the empire were not the only
subjects of his solicitude while sheltered in the castle and city
of the Tuscan heroine. The world was startled and scandal-
ized by the intelligence that his princely hostess had granted
all her hereditary states to her Apostolic guest, and to his
successors for ever, in full allodial dominion. . . . Canossa, the
scene of this memorable cession, was, at the same time, the
prison of him to whom it was made. All the passes were
beset with Henry’s troops. All the Lombard and Tuscan
cities were in Henry’s possession. His reviving courage had
kindled the zeal of his adherents. He was no longer an
outcast to be trampled down with impunity, but the leader of
a formidable host, with whom even the Vicar of Christ must
condescend to temporize.

In the wild defiles of the Alps swift messengers from the
princes to the Pope hurried past solemn legates from the Pope
to the princes ; they urging his instant appearance at Augs-
burg, he exhorting them to avoid any decision in his absence.
Mitred emissaries also passed from Gregory to the Emperor,
summoning him to attend the diet within a time by which no
one un wafted by wings or steam could have reached the place,
and requesting from him a suicidal safe-conduct for his ponti-
fical judge. The Pope was now confined to the weapons
with which men of the gown contend with men of the sword.
His prescience foreboded a civil war. His policy was to
assume the guidance of the German league just far enough to
maintain his lofty claims, not far enough to be irrevocably com-
mitted to the leaguers. A plausible apology for his absence was
necessary. It was afforded by Henry’s rejection of demands
vhich were made only that they might be rejected.

To Otho and the aspiring Rudolf such subtleties were alike
mfamiliar and unsuspected. Those stout soldiers and simple

194

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Germans knew that the Pope had deposed their King, and |
had absolved them from their allegiance. They doubted not, I
therefore, that he was bound heart and soul to their cause.
Or if, in the assembly which they held at Forcheim, a doubt
was whispered of Italian honour or of pontifical faith, it was |
silenced by the presence there of papal legates, who sedulously
swelled the tide of invective against Henry. At first, indeed,
they dissuaded the immediate choice of a rival sovereign. But
to the demand of the princes for prompt and decisive measures
they gave their ready assent. They advised them, it is true, to
confer no hereditary title on the obj ect of their choice. Y et, when
in defiance of that advice the choice was made, they solemnly i
confirmed it in the name, and by the authority, of Gregory.
They did not, certainly, vote for the election of Rudolf ; but,
when the shouts of the multitude announced his accession to
the Teutonic throne, they placed the crown on his head. ... I
The decretals of Rome, of Tribur, of Canossa, and of
Forcheim, were now to bear their proper fruits — fruits of bitter I
taste, and of evil augury. At the moment when the cathedral
of Mentz was pouring forth the crowds who had just listened ;
to the coronation oath of Rudolf, the clash of arms, the cries ,
of combatants, and the shrieks of the dying, mingled, ,
strangely and mournfully, with the sacred anthems and the
songs of revellers. An idle frolic of some Swabian soldiers
had kindled into rage the sullen spirit with which the partisans t
of Henry had gazed on that unwelcome pageant ; and the first
rude and exasperated voice was echoed by thousands, who
learned, from those acclamations, the secret of their numbers
and their strength. The discovery and agitation spread from
city to city, and roused the whole German people, from the
Rhine to the Oder. Men’s hearts yearned over their exiled
King. They remembered that, but twelve short years before,
he had been basely stolen from his mother by churchmen,
who had yet more basely corrupted him. They commemorated
his courage, his courtesy, and his munificence. They pardoned
his faults as the excesses of youth, and resented, as insults
to themselves, the indignities of Canossa and the treason of
Forcheim. In this reflux of public opinion the loyal and the
brave, all who cherished the honours of the crown, and all who

GREGORY VII

195

desired the independence of the State, were supported by the
multitudes to whom the papal edicts against simony and
clerical marriages were fraught with disaster, and by that still
more numerous body who, at all times, lend their voices and
their arms to swell the triumph of every rising cause. To this
confederacy Rudolf had to oppose the alliance of the princes,
secular and ecclesiastical, the devoted zeal of the Saxon people,
and the secret support, rather than the frank and open coun-
tenance, of the Pope. The shock of these hostile powers was
near and inevitable.

In the spring of 1077 tidings were spread throughout Ger- a. d.
many of the Emperor’s arrival to the northward of the Alps. 1077
From Franconia, the seat of his house, from the fruitful pro-
vince of Burgundy, and from the Bohemian mountains, he was
greeted with enthusiastic welcome. Many even of the Bava-
rians and Swabians revolted in his favour. His standard once
more floated over all the greater citadels of the Rhine. He
who, six months before, had fled from Spires a solitary
wanderer, was now at the head of a powerful army, controlling
the whole of Southern Germany, laying waste the territories
of his rivals, and threatening them with a signal retribution.

Amidst the rising tempest the voice of Gregory was heard. . . .

In the name of Peter he enjoined either king to send him
a safe-conduct, that he might in person arbitrate between
them, and stop the effusion of Christian blood. A safe but an
impracticable offer ; an indirect but significant avowal of neu-
trality between the sovereign he had lately deposed and the
sovereign whom, by his legates, he had crowned. . . . Thus
ignobly withdrawing from the contest he had kindled, Hilde-
brand returned from Canossa to the papal city. The Great
Countess, as usual, attended as the commander of his guard.
Rome received in triumph her new Germanicus, and decreed
an ovation to his ever-faithful Agrippina.

While the glories of Canossa were thus celebrated by re-
joicings in the Christian capital, they were expiated by blood
on the plains of Saxony. ... In the autumn of 1078 the 1078
rival kings met on the banks of the Stren, on the plains of
Melrichstadt. Each was driven from the field with enormous
loss; Henry by his inveterate antagonist Otho, Rudolf by

o 2

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

196

Count Herbard, the lieutenant of Henry. Each claimed the jj
victory. An issue so undecisive could draw from the circum-
spect Pontiff nothing more definite than renewed exhortations
to rely on the holy Peter, and could urge him to no measure
more hazardous than that of convening a new council at the
Lateran. There appeared the imperial envoys with hollow
vows of obedience, and Saxon messengers invoking some intel- 1;
ligible intimation of the judgment and purposes of the Apostolic
see. Again the Pope listened, spoke, exhorted, threatened, and jj
left the bleeding world to interpret as it might the mystic
sense of the Infallible. . . . The Saxon annalist has preserved 1
three letters sent by his countrymen on this occasion to Gregory,
which he must have read with admiration and with shame.

44 You know, and the letters of your Holiness attest (such is
their indignant remonstrance), that it was by no advice or for
any interest of ours, but for wrongs done to the Ploly See, that
you deposed our King, and forbade us, under fearful menaces, |
to acknowledge him. We have obeyed you at great danger,
and at the expense of horrible sufferings. The reward of ;
sacrifices is, that he who was compelled to cast himself at
your feet has been absolved without punishment, and has been
permitted to crush us to the very abyss of misery. What
especially perplexes us simple folk is, that the legates of Henry,
though excommunicated by your legates, are well received at
Rome. Holy Father, your piety assures us that you are guided
by honourable not by subtle views ; but we are too gross to
understand them. . . . We conjure you to look into your own
heart, to remember your own honour, to fear the wrath of
God, and for your own sake, if not for love of us, rescue your-
self from responsibility for the torrents of blood poured out in
our land.”

To these pathetic appeals Gregory answered slowly and
reluctantly, by disavowing the acts of his legates at Forcheim ;
by extolling his own justice, courage, and disinterestedness;
by invoking the support of all orders of men in Germany ; and
by assuring them, in Scriptural language, of the salvation of
such “as should persevere to the end.” But the hour for
blandishments had passed away. The day of wrath and the
power of the sword had come.

GREGORY VII.

197

The snow covered the earth, and the frost had chained the
rivers, when in the winter of 1079-80 the armies of Henry
and Rudolf were drawn up in hostile lines at the village of
Fladenheim, near Mulhausen. Henry was the assailant, but
Rudolf, though driven with great loss from the held, was
the conqueror; for in that held the dreaded Otho again com-
manded, and by his skill and courage a rout was turned into
a victory.

The intelligence arrived at Rome at the moment when
Gregory was presiding there in the most numerous of the
many councils he had convened at the Lateran. Long-suppressed
shame for his ignoble indecision, the murmurs of the assembled
prelates, a voice from heaven, audible, as we are told, to his
sense alone, and, above all, the triumphant held of Fladenheim,
combined to overcome his long-cherished but timid policy.
Rising from his throne with the majesty of his earlier days, the
Pope, in the names of Peter and of Paul, “ of God, and of His
holy mother Mary,” excommunicated Henry, took from him
the government of his states, deprived him of his royal rank,
forbade all Christian people to receive him as their king, “ gave,
granted, and conceded ” that Rudolf might rule the German and
Italian empire ; and with blessings on Rudolfs adherents, and
curses on his foes, dissolved the assembly. Then, moved as
he believed by a Divine impulse, he proceeded to the altar, and
uttered a prediction that, ere the Church should celebrate the
festival of the Prince of the Apostles, Henry, her rebellious
outcast, should neither reign, nor live, to molest her.

A perilous prophecy ! Henry was no longer the exile of
Tribur, nor the penitent of Canossa. Yet his own rage on
hearing of this new papal sentence did not burn so fiercely as
the wrath of his adherents.

With the sanction of thirty bishops a new anti-Pope, Gui-
bert of Ravenna, was elected at Brixen, and, at every court in
Europe, imperial embassies demanded support for the common
cause of all temporal sovereigns. In every part of Germany
troops were levied, and Henry marched at their head to crush
the one German power in alliance with Rome. But that power
was still animated by the Saxon spirit, and was still sustained
by the claims of Rudolf and by the genius of Otho.

A. D.
1080

198

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

A. D.
1080

On the bright dawn of an autumnal day his forces, drawn
up on the smiling banks of the Elster, raised the sacred song
of the Hebrews, “ God standeth in the congregation of princes ;
He is a judge among gods,” and flung themselves on the far-
extended lines of Henry’s army, who, with emulous devotion,
met them with the hardly less sublime canticle, “ Te Deum
Laudamus.” Cries more welcome to the demons of war soon
stilled these sacred strains ; cries of despair, of anguish, and of |
terror. They first rose from one of Henry’s squadrons, which,
alarmed by the fall of their captain, receded, and in their
retreat spread through the rest a panic, a pause, and a
momentary confusion. That moment was enough for the
eagle glance of Otho. He rushed on the wavering Imperial-
ists, and, ere that bright sun had reached the meridian,
thousands had fallen by the Saxon sword or had perished ;
in the blood-stained river. The victory was complete, the j
exultation rapturous. Shouts of glory to the God of battles,
thanksgiving for the deliverance of Saxony, paeans of immortal j
honour to Otho, the noblest of her sons, soothed or exas- j
perated the agonies of the dying, when the triumph was
turned into sudden and irremediable mourning. On the field
which had apparently secured his crown Rudolf himself had
fallen. He fell by an illustrious arm. Godfrey of Bouillon,
the hero of the Jerusalem Delivered, struck the fatal blow.
Another sword severed the right hand from the arm of Rudolf.
“It is the hand,” he cried, as his glazing eye rested on it,

“ with which I confirmed my fealty to Henry my lord.” At
once elevated by so signal a victory and depressed by these
penitent misgivings, his spirit passed away, leaving his
adherents to the mercy of his rival.

The same sun which witnessed the ruin of Henry’s army
on the Elster looked down on a conflict in which, on that
eventful morning, the forces of Matilda, in the Mantuan
territory, fled before his own. He now once more descended
into Italy. He came, not as formerly, a pilgrim and an exile,
but at the head of an army devoted to his person, and defying
all carnal enemies and all spiritual censures. He came to
encounter Hildebrand, destitute of all Transalpine alliances,
and supported even in Italy by no power but that of Matilda ;

i99

GREGORY VII.

.'4

for the Norman Duke of Apulia was far away, attempting the
conquest of the Eastern capital and empire. But Henry left
in his rear the invincible Saxons and the hero who commanded
them. To prevent a diversion in that quarter, the Emperor
proposed to abdicate his dominion in Saxony in favour of
Conrad, his son. But Otho (a merry talker, as his annalist
informs us) rejected the project with the remark that “ the calf
of a vicious bull usually proved vicious.” Leaving, therefore,
this implacable enemy to his machinations, the Emperor A D
pressed forward, and before the summer of 1080 the citizens 1080
of Rome saw from their walls the German standards in hostile
array in the Campagna.

In the presence of such dangers the gallant spirit of the
aged Pope once more rose and exulted. He convened a
synod to attest his last defiance of his formidable enemy. He
exhorted the German princes to elect a successor to Rudolf.

In letters of impassioned eloquence he again maintained his
supremacy over all the kings and rulers of mankind. He
welcomed persecution as the badge of his holy calling, and
while the besiegers were at the gates he disposed (at least in
words) of royal crowns and distant provinces. Matilda sup-
plied him with money, which for a while tranquillized the
Roman populace. He himself, as we are assured, wrought
miracles to extinguish conflagrations kindled by their treachery.

In language such as martyrs use, he consoled the partners
of his sufferings. In language such as heroes breathe, he
animated the defenders of the city. The siege or blockade
continued for three years uninterruptedly, except when
Henry’s troops were driven, by the deadly heats of autumn,
to the neighbouring hills. Distress, and it is alleged bribery,
at length subdued the courage of the garrison. On every side
clamours were heard for peace, for Henry demanded, as the
terms of peace, nothing more than the recognition of his
imperial title, and his coronation by the hands of Gregory.

The conscience, perhaps the pride, of Gregory revolted against
the proposal. His invincible will opposed and silenced the
outcries of the famished multitudes ; nor could their entreaties
or their threats extort from him more than a promise that, in
the approaching winter, he would propose the question to a

200

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

a.d. pontifical synod. It met, by the permission of Henry, on the

10 83 30th of November, 1083. It was the latest council of Gregory’s
pontificate. A few bishops, faithful to their chief and to his
cause, now occupied the seats so often occupied by mitred
churchmen. Every pallid cheek and anxious eye was turned
to him who occupied the loftier throne in the centre of that I
agitated assembly. He rose, and the half-uttered suggestions of I
fear and human policy were hushed into deep stillness as he |
spoke. He spoke of the glorious example, of the light affliction, 5
and of the eternal reward of martyrs for the faith. He spoke as
dying fathers speak to their children, of peace, and hope, aud
of consolation. But he spoke also as inspired prophets spake |
of yore to the kings of Israel, denouncing the swift vengeance
of Heaven against his oppressor. The enraptured audience
exclaimed that they had heard the voice of an angel, not of a
man. Gregory dismissed the assembly, and calmly prepared
for whatever extremity of distress might await him.

1084 It did not linger. In the spring of 1084 the garrison was
overpowered, the gates were thrown open to the besiegers, and
Gregory sought a precarious refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo.
He left the great Church of the Lateran as a theatre for the
triumph of his antagonist and his rival. Seated on the Apostolic
throne, Guibert, the anti-Pope of Brixen, was consecrated
there by the title of Clement III, and then, as the successor
of Peter, he placed the crown of Germany and of Italy on the
brows of Henry and of Bertha, as they knelt before him.

And now Henry had, or seemed to have, in his grasp the
author of the shame of Canossa, of the anathemas of the
Lateran, and of the civil wars and rebellions of the empire.
The base populace of Rome were already anticipating with
sanguinary joy the humiliation, perhaps the death, of the
noblest spirit who had reigned there since the slaughter of
Julius. The approaching catastrophe, whatever might be its
form, Gregory was prepared to meet with a serene confidence
in God and a haughty defiance of man. A few hours more,
and the castle of St. Angelo must have yielded to famine or to
assault ; when the aged Pope, in the very agony of his fate,
gathered the reward of the policy with which he had cemented
the alliance between the Papacy and the Norman conquerors

GREGORY VII.

201

of the South and of Italy. Robert Guiscard, returning from
Constantinople, flew to the rescue of his suzerain. Scouts
announced to Henry the approach of a Norman host in which
the Norman battle-axe and the cross were strangely united with
the Saracenic cimeter and the crescent. A precipitate retreat
scarcely rescued his enfeebled troops from the impending
danger. • He abandoned his prey in a fever of disappointment.
Unable to slake his thirst for vengeance, he might perhaps
allay it by surprising the Great Countess, and overwhelming
her forces, still in arms in the Modenese. But he was himself
surprised in the attempt by her superior skill and vigilance.
Shouts for St Peter and Matilda roused the retreating Impe-
rialists by night, near the castle of Sorbaria. They retired
across the Alps with such a loss of men, of officers, and of
treasure, as disabled them from any further enterprises.

The Emperor returned into Germany to reign undisturbed
by civil war ; for the great Otho was dead, and Herman of
Luxemburg, who had assumed the imperial title, was permitted
to abdicate it with contemptuous impunity. Henry returned,
however, to prepare for the new conflicts with the Papacy, to
drain the cup of toil, of danger, and of distress, and to die at
length (1x06) with a heart broken by the parricidal cruelty of
his son. No prayers were said, and no requiem sung, over the
unhallowed grave which received the bones of the excommu-
nicated monarch. Yet they were committed to the earth with
the best and the kindest obsequies. The pity of his enemies,
the lamentation of his subjects, and the unbidden tears of the
poor, the widows, and the orphans, who crowded round the bier
of their benefactor, rendered his tomb not less sacred than if it
had been blessed by the united prayers of the whole Christian
Episcopacy. These unbribed mourners wept over a prince to
whom God had given a large heart and a capacious mind, but
who had derived from canonized bishops a corrupting educa-
tion, and from a too early and too unchequered prosperity the
development of every base and cruel appetite ; but to whom
calamity had imparted a self-dominion from which none could
withhold his respect, and an active sympathy with sorrow to
which none could refuse his love.

With happier fortunes, as indeed with loftier virtues, Matilda

202

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

continued for twenty-five years to wage war in defence of the
Apostolic see. After a life which might seem to belong to j
the province of romance rather than of history, she died at the
age of seventy-five, bequeathing to the world a name second,
in the annals of her age, to none but that of Hildebrand j
himself.

To him the Norman rescue of the papal city brought only
a momentary relief. He returned in triumph to the Lateran. !;
But within a few hours he looked from the walls of that ancient j
palace on a scene of woe such as, till then, had never passed |
before him. A sanguinary contest was raging between the s
forces of Robert and the citizens attached to Henry. Every
street was barricaded, every house had become a fortress. The
pealing of bells, the clash of arms, cries of fury, and shrieks
of despair assailed his ears in dismal concert. When the sun
set behind the Tuscan hills on this scene of desolation, another
light, and a still more fearful struggle, succeeded. Flames
ascended at once from every quarter. They leaped from house
to house, enveloping and destroying whatever was most splen-
did or most sacred in the edifices of mediaeval Rome. Amidst
the roar of the conflagration they had kindled, and by its
portentous light, the fierce Saracens and the ruthless North-
men revelled in plunder and carnage, like demons by the glare I
of their native pandemonium. Gregory gazed with agony
on the real and present aspect of civil war. Perhaps he
thought with penitence on the wars he had kindled beyond
the Alps. Two-thirds of the city perished. Every convent
was violated, every altar profaned, and multitudes driven away
into perpetual and hopeless slavery. Himself a voluntary
exile, Gregory sought in the castle of Salerno, and under the
protection of the Normans, the security he could no longer find
among his own exasperated subjects. Age and anxiety weighed
heavily upon him. An unwonted lassitude depressed a frame
D# till now incapable of fatigue. He recognised the summons of
85 death, and his soul rose with unconquerable power to entertain
that awful visitant. He summoned round his bed the bishops
and cardinals who had attended his flight from Rome. He
passed before them, in firm and rapid retrospect, the incidents
of his eventful life. He maintained the truth of the great

ANSELM.

203

principles by which it had been governed from the commence-
ment to the close. He named his three immediate successors
in the Papacy. He assured his weeping friends of his inter-
cession for them in heaven. He forgave, and blessed, and
absolved his enemies, though with the resolute exceptions of
the Emperor and the anti-Pope. He then composed himself
to die. His faltering lips had closed on the transubstantiated
elements. The final unction had given assurance that the
body, so soon to be committed to the dust, would rise again in
honour and incorruption. Anxious to catch the last accents
of that once oracular voice, the mourners were bending
over him, when, struggling in the very grasp of Death, he
collected, for one last effort, his failing powers, and breathed
out his spirit with the indignant exclamation, “ I have loved
righteousness, and hated iniquity : and therefore I die in
exile!’’ 1

ANSELM.

A.D. IO33 — IIO9.

{From “ Essays and Reviews by the Rev. Richard Church.)

The Church policy of William the Conqueror, which .... a. d.
certainly had in part for its object to promote vigour, regularity, io33
and strictness in the Church, is marked by two main features.

One is the disposition to give and guarantee to the Church,
within certain limits, a separate and independent jurisdiction.

In the important council, or rather Parliament, of Lillebonne
(1080), this was done for Normandy. From the floating mass
of precedents and customs definite laws were extricated and
fixed in writing ; the province of the episcopal courts marked
out with tolerable equity ; questions about traditionary rights
between the feudal and ecclesiastical powers adjusted, and
provision made for settling future claims. ... In England the
1 Abridged from Essay I.

204

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

same disposition to recognise and guard the jurisdiction of the I
Church appears in the separation of the bishop’s court from
the secular court of the hundred, and the distinct and clear
admission of the independence of that law by which the !
bishop was to judge. The King’s mandate, by virtue of which
this separation was to take place, expresses a strong desire for
the restoration of Church laws to their purity and force, and
secures their exercise from the secular interference to which
it had hitherto been subject. And the frequent councils held
during William’s reign prove that he meant what he said.

But if William, for a feudal sovereign whose will was law, jl
went out of his way to make the Church more active and
powerful than she had been, he did so under the full con- j
sciousness, and with the distinct and jealous assertion, of his j
absolute control over her at the moment. ... In William’s
policy the feudal sovereign was the source of ecclesiastical as ;;
of civil authority : as he had his feudatory barons, so he had ;l
his feudatory bishops ; both invested with their office and j
dignity by him, both bound to him by the same oath of j
homage. . . . They were the great Church officers of the crown
appointed to govern the Church for the King, and according I
to his wisdom and policy to make laws, and to execute them,
not by their own authority, but by his. The last appeal was
not to the law of the Gospel, but to the customs and prece-
dents of feudalism. The powers of the Church were surren-
dered against ail but the weak and helpless ; and a large body
of her members, and those the most licentious and unruly— :
the mass of the soldiery of the kingdom — were avowedly with-
drawn from that control and discipline which she was to
exercise at her own discretion and peril, without respect of j
persons.

Such was the condition in which the Conqueror left the !
Church to his successor. He had carried out his policy with- |
out meeting any opposition from the clergy. It is not difficult
to understand their acquiescence in it, even on the part of s
such men as Lanfranc. For good certainly came of it, great
and manifest good, in a most wild and lawless time. The
strongest arm in England, the only power which could make
itself felt in such a break-up of society, was, on the whole, on

ANSELM.

205

their side. Why should they, at such a distance from the
scene of conflict between the Church and the empire on the
continent, and, moreover, so much perplexed by its events —
with fierce and unscrupulous Norman soldiers to deal with, on
the one hand, and a jealous Anglo-Saxon population, of whose
language they were ignorant, on the other — why should they
turn it against themselves ? . . . But on the 9th of September,

1087, the “ famous Baron” who had wrought greater things
and caused more misery than any of his fellows in Europe
was taken away from human affairs. Ele died almost alone.

Those whose attendance he most desired, Lanfranc and
Anselm, were kept from his death-bed by distance or sick-
ness. When his corpse had been deserted by his children and
servants, and left without covering on the bare floor, he was
indebted for his burial to an obscure country knight, who,

“ for the love of God,” brought his body to Caen, and his
grave in his own noble monastery of St. Stephen was at
the moment of burial forbidden him by a boor from whom
he had of old violently taken the ground on which it stood.

His friend and coadjutor, the great Archbishop — great not in
having founded an empire, but reformed a Church — followed
him shortly: he had seen but too certainly the troubles that
were coming, and left their full weight for his successor.

That successor was Anselm. He was not a man fitted,
seemingly, by nature and training, for such a lot. Like
Lanfranc, he was the son of an Italian noble, born at Aosta A. d.
n Piedmont, where his parents lived in affluence. His mother 1033
vas a woman of warm and quiet piety, and her lessons early
exerted a strong influence on his mind. As a boy, he was
ull of the strange simple faith of childhood : brought up
tmong the Alps, he “ used to fancy that heaven rested on the
nountain-tops ; ” and, sleeping or waking, his thoughts were
:ver running on what it held. He soon distinguished himself
n the public schools, and showed a strong disposition for the
ife of the cloister ; but his wishes were checked by his father,
nd gave way at last before his opening prospects of rank and
wealth. As he grew up, his love of religion, and even of lite-
ature, was damped by the amusements and pursuits of his
tation. His mother died early in his youth, and then “ the

20b

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

ship of his heart,” says his biographer, “ having lost its sole
anchor, drifted off almost entirely into the waves of the world.”
What seemed to await him was the life of coarse and uneasy]
riot, the authority, importance, and brawls of a village noble, —
ending, perhaps, in the death of a dog, — at the foot of the
Alps. But Providence, which had marked out for him so high
a destiny, drove him from his home and country by the un-
appeasable harshness of his father. With one companion he
crossed Mont Cenis, and, after three years spent in Burgundy
and France, came to Normandy.

In the year 1059 all nations which spoke the Latin tongue,
say the Chronicles, were ringing with the fame of the abbey of!!
Bee in Normandy, and its prior, Lanfranc. . . .

Thither among the throng of students came Anselm, another
Lombard wanderer, travelling, according to the fashion of
those days, to acquire knowledge. He soon far outstripped !
his fellow-pupils, and his genius and untiring industry gained I
him the especial regard of Lanfranc, who employed him to
teach under himself. Meanwhile the wish of his boyhood i
revived for a religious life ; but such a step was not to be i
taken hastily, and long and anxiously did he think about it,
and about the best plan of such a life. Should he become a
hermit ? or live under rule and vow on his patrimony, dis-
pensing it all for the benefit of the poor ? or enter a monas-
tery? If he entered a monastery, Bee was the most natural
place for him ; but his unconscious ambition suggested, so he j
confessed afterwards, that at Bee he would be lost, and be
no use while Lanfranc taught there : Clugny, again, was as i
strict as Bee, but discouraged learning. At last he put his
case unreservedly into the hands of Lanfranc and the Arch-
bishop of Rouen. Under their advice he resolved to devote
himself to a monastic life, and at length assumed the habit at
Bee.

a.d. Three years after his admission, the virtual government of

1064 tpe monastery passed into his hands, on his succeeding Lan-
franc as prior ; and fifteen years later, on the death of Herluin,
the simple-hearted and venerable founder, he was elected

1078 abbot. Bee lost nothing under his rule of what it had gained
under Lanfranc. Very different in character and cast of mind

ANSELM.

207

from his great predecessor, he worked in the same cause, and
with equal earnestness and success. His monastery still con-
tinued one of the chief centres of religious and intellectual
activity to England, Normandy, and even France; awakening
thought, and restoring a practical and strict sense of Christian
duty, in their wild and unsettled population, by its own
example of holiness, and by the numerous pupils which it was
continually sending forth from its school. The pursuits to
which Lanfranc had given the first impulse by his clear and
eloquent lectures, and his great erudition, Anselm carried for-
ward by his freshness and vigour of thought, and his native
genius for refined metaphysical speculation. He governed his
monastery with skill ; no such easy task, in days when the
abbot had to exercise more personal superintendence and
more severity over grown men of all ages than the master of
a large school would now venture upon towards his boys.
Laufranc was famous for his powers of government : Anselm,
by his clear insight into character, his patience and firmness,
and his winning affectionateness, had as much hold on his
monks as Lanfranc had gained by his knowledge of the world
and his forcible and commanding character. “ To those in
health,” says Eadmer, “ Anselm was a father; to the sick a
mother.”

He seemed to have found the sphere for which he was
intended. In the quiet of his monastery his subtle and active
intellect could pursue without interruption that striking line of
speculation, full of devotion, though so abstract and method-
ical, the love of which haunted him like a passion, and
which began a new era in Latin theology. He had pupils
round him whose minds were kindling at his own, and friends
to whom he could open his heart with the frankness and
warmth which were such strong features of his character, —
features of which we see so much in his letters, and which
would almost have seemed softness, except in one under such
stern and strong self-discipline. And further, the presence and
society of a large body of men, all of them more or less
sincerely engaged in efforts after a religious life, dependent on
his care, and needing his succour and counsel, gave infinitely
varied play to a character peculiarly delicate and skilful in its

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appreciation and treatment of others. He found, also, in his J :
monastery what answered to and satisfied his deep feeling of
devotion, in those services of unwearied praise and prayer, j
and those opportunities for self-recollection, by which men
were permitted in those days to realize, in so vivid a manner,
the communion of saints, and the presence of the Invisible. j

His influence reached far beyond the walls of his cloister, j
His high and self-devoted religion, and his name as a writer j
and teacher, told even upon the world without ; and to these 1
he added popular qualities of a singularly engaging kind. His 1
striking reality and simplicity of character, set off by a strong j
dash of humour, his good sense and considerateness, his grace- j
ful condescension to the weak and poor, his gentleness and j
evenness of temper, veiling such unquestionable seriousness of
purpose, and sternness towards himself, won upon all hearts, 4
even that of the iron-minded Conqueror.

“ When he used to teach or give advice,7’ says Eadmer, “ he 1
was especially careful to be most plain-spoken, avoiding all 1
pomp and generalities, and illustrating his meaning as best he *1
could by any homely or familiar example. All men rejoiced
in his converse ; he gained the love of young and old, of men
and women, of rich and poor, and all were glad to minister to
him, — of so frank and glad a spirit was he to all, and so
readily did he enter into their ways, as far as he might without I
sin. He was the darling of France and Normandy, known i
and welcome also in England.” After his first visit to England !
“ there was no earl or countess, or great person there, who did
not think that they had missed favour in the sight of God if
they haply had not had an opportunity of rendering some service
to Anselm, abbot of Bee.” Such was the course to which
Anselm seemed to be called ; to the calm and meditative life
of the cloister, where he might influence his generation by his
example and writings, and by the minds which he formed
there : to be the counsellor and doctor of his age, calling forth
seriousness around him ; to be the father of a great religious
brotherhood ; and, in the world, to be an example of primitive
saintliness, carrying blessing and commanding veneration and
love wherever he appeared.

Anselm was twenty-seven when he finally resolved to “ leave

ANSELM

209

all,” and entered for good on what seemed to be his work in
life. He had done for ever with the world, with its consola-
tions and joys; as he thought, with its storms also. Thirty-
three years of peace were granted him, during which he served
God and his brethren in gladness of heart, without thought or
fear of change. But they were only to be a long respite. The
last of them found him still at Bee, an old man, expecting to
die there, but in reality with the great work and trial of his
life not yet begun nor looked for.

In the year 1092 William Rufus had been four years on the
throne, and had let loose feudalism, in all its lawlessness, upon
England. The hearty frankness, high spirit, and generosity
of his youth had degenerated especially since the death of
Lanfranc, from whom he had received his education and
knighthood, into a brutal passion for the wildest debauchery
and a savage impatience of every kind of restraint. Not
that even now he was without the remains of what might
have been a fine character ; gleams of nobleness and generosity
broke out at times in the midst of his boisterous orgies and
his fiercest bursts of rage. In his rough and cruel merriment
he did not want for humour, which seems even sometimes to
have been a veil under which he expressed self-reproach. But
he was frantic with his excessive power. “ The truth must be
told/’ is the reluctant avowal of William of Malmesbury, who
can scarcely help making him a hero, and who “ would be
inclined to think, if religion allowed the doctrine of metemp-
sychosis, that the soul of Julius Caesar had reappeared in
William; ” “ the truth must be told : he feared God very little,
and men not at all.”

His government was a full-blown specimen of that worldly
and cruel system which was in various ways endeavouring to
undermine the power which Christianity still maintained over
society ; a government which, while it allowed any amount of
wickedness and oppression among the powerful,— the barons
and their dependents, — repressed with a strong hand and un-
sparing severity any breach of the King’s peace among the
poor and weak. . . . Appeal to the Church was vain ; William,
who openly and avowedly hated religion, trampled upon her
and plundered her to support his profuse expenditure, which

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was on the same wild scale as everything else in his character.

. . . In his father’s time the revenues which accrued to a see or
abbey during a vacancy were handed over in full to the next
holder ; the appointment to the offices, though almost always
made by the crown, was yet looked on as a trust. But William
Rufus asserted the King’s full and exclusive right of property
in every possession of the Church, and he acted systematically
on this claim. As soon as a church became vacant, a King’s j
commissioner went down and took possession ; and it was j
either disposed of to the highest bidder, for the King’s profit, j
or kept vacant altogether, the revenue going meanwhile to the
Exchequer. Church benefices were treated as if they were
simply royal domains, to be granted or withheld at the King’s j
pleasure.

It is not, however, to William alone that the credit of these
proceedings is due. The man who ruled supreme in England
during most of his reign, and who was the contriver and agent
of these and other financial measures of the same sort, was a
low-born Norman ecclesiastic named Ralph Passaflabere, or,
as he was surnamed, Flambard the Firebrand — a personage
whom his contemporaries seemed to have looked at with a
mixture of horror, indignation, and amusement. What Cleon
was to the Athenian democracy Ralph Flambard was to the
feudal King. By his talent for coarse and boisterous jokes,
and his noisy and unfailing merriment, he had become
William’s chief boon companion. But the King soon found in
him a servant as fierce-tempered, unscrupulous, and fearless as
himself, and possessed of far superior talents for intrigue and
legal chicane. Impudent, cunning, and ready, with a tongue
which nothing could silence, and activity and resolution which
set at nought all opposition, he simply laid himself out to
enrich his master. He was placed at the head of the
Exchequer, and rose to be Justiciary of England and Bishop
of Durham. . . . Into this man’s hands, as King’s commissioner,
had the see of Canterbury fallen, since the death of Lanfranc ;
and, in spite of every remonstrance, William refused to fill it.
Men looked on indignantly — bishops, barons, and people, for
mixed or different reasons— at this new and unheard-of injury :
to see the “ mother church of all England ” lying in widow-

ANSELM.

211

hood ; the sacred throne of St. Austin, “ the stay of Christian
religion in the realm,” under the feet of Ralph Flambard.

Such, was the state of things in England, when, at the
earnest request of Hugh de Loup, earl of Chester, one of the
most powerful and magnificent of the Conqueror’s barons,
Anselm crossed from Normandy. . . .

The Earl of Chester was, in his way, a patron and friend a.d.
of religious men. He had an old-standing friendship with I092
Anselm, and there can be little doubt that it was with the view
of procuring his election to the primacy that he sent for him
to England to superintend — so he said — a new monastery,
which he had just founded in his county. Such certainly was
the talk of the day, and Anselm had such misgivings on the
subject, that he at first positively refused to go ; and it was not
till Earl Hugh, who had meanwhile been attacked with a
dangerous sickness, and earnestly besought his counsels in the
hour of need, had pledged himself on his honour that the
reports about Anselm’s intended promotion were unfounded,
that he was induced to visit England. He was received with
honour by the King and the court : at Canterbury the clergy
and people met him with enthusiastic welcome as their future
archbishop; but he immediately left the town, and nothing
more was said or done for the present to make him expect the
primacy. Yet, when he had accomplished the immediate
objects of his visit, he found himself still detained, and the
King refused his permission for him to return to Normandy.

It is not easy to understand William’s motives for detaining
Anselm. Whatever might have been the wishes of the court,
he certainly had no present intention of filling up the arch-
bishopric. When Anselm’s holiness was praised in his presence,
irid the speaker remarked that “ the Abbot of Bee had no
vishes for anything earthly,” William added scoffingly, “No,
not even for the archbishopric ; but by the Holy Face of Lucca,”
le continued, fiercely, “other archbishop besides me there
hall be none.”

He had occasion, however, soon after to change his mind.

Vhen he kept his court at Gloucester, at Christmas, 1092, his
reat men had petitioned, “that at least he would give leave
bat prayers should be offered up throughout England, that God

p 2

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would be pleased to put it into the King’s heart to institute a
worthy pastor to the church of Canterbury.” William, though
highly offended at the petition, granted it. “ Let the Church
ask what she pleases,” he said ; “ I shall not cease to work my
will.”

Shortly after this he sickened ; his danger became imminent.
In a moment of remorse and terror he was induced, among
other acts of penitence and amendment, to fill up the arch-
bishopric ; and he nominated Anselm.
a. d. With our modern notions about preferment, we can scarcely j
1093 enter into the scene that followed, when the moment of trial jj
which Anselm had for some time foreseen, without the power !
of escaping from it, was at length arrived, and he saw himself, '
after a life of quiet, on the point of being cast forth in his old
age to buffet with the storms of the world — in those days a
wild and rough one. Many years before this, when only prior j
of Bee, and complaining of his inadequacy for his office, ;
Maurilius, archbishop of Rouen, had forewarned him that he ;
must expect to be called to yet heavier burdens, and Lad
solemnly charged him on his “ holy obedience ” not to refuse
them. In compliance with this command, he had become
abbot. But he was now summoned to be the restorer of the
English Church, and the colleague of William Rufus in its
government ; to make head against a state of things which the
English bishops, frightfully evil as many of them felt it to be,
had not the heart to resist. He grew pale and trembled when
he heard the acclamations which announced the King’s i
election. When the bishops came to lead him to the King, to
receive investiture, he refused to go. “ He was too old,” he
said, “ and knew nothing of business ; and, further, his allegi-
ance, his canonical obedience, his counsel and services, were |
already vowed to others.” He was dragged into the King’s I
sick chamber. William, hard man as he was, was moved even
to tears : but his bitter entreaties to Anselm to save him from !
dying in the guilt of sacrilege, with the archbishopric still in his
hands, and the angry remonstrances of the bystanders that
Anselm was troubling the King’s dying hours and betraying
the cause of the Church, were all in vain. Anselm refused to
receive the archbishopric. “ Might it have been the will of

AJVSELM.

213

God,” said he afterwards of those moments, “ I would gladly
have died on the spot.” In his distress of mind, he burst into
an agony of tears, and blood gushed from his nostrils. The
King became impatient. The old man was dragged to the
bedside, and his right arm held out by the bishops to receive
from the King the pastoral staff. But he kept his hand firmly
clenched. They tried by main force to wrench it open, and
when the pain they put him to caused him to cry out, the
bishops held the staff against his still closed hand. He was
borne forth, rather than led, with hymns and acclamations, to a
neighbouring church, crying out, “It is nought that ye are
doing ! it is nought that ye are doing ! ” “ It would have been

difficult to discover,” writes he afterwards to his monks at Bee,
“ whether madmen were dragging along one in his senses, or
the sane a madman, save that they were chanting, and I looking
more like a corpse than a living man, with amazement and
anguish ; and, on the afternoon of the same day, when I had
time to recollect myself, and to realize your affection, and the
burden imposed on me, sorrow — so unusual with me — -overcame
my reason to such a degree that people thought I was dying or
fainting, and brought holy water to sprinkle me, or make me
drink it.” In spite of what had passed, he persisted in refusing
to acknowledge the validity of his appointment ; and the matter
was, meanwhile, referred to the decision of those to whose
obedience and service he was already bound — the Archbishop of
Rouen, the Duke of Normandy, and the monastery of Bee. Their
consent was gained ; not without difficulty on the part of the
monks of Bee. We give the letter he received from the Arch-
bishop as a specimen of the sober and measured tone with which
serious men in those days addressed a brother who was called
to a high office in the Church, — a tone, not of congratulation
for honours won, but of grave and subdued sympathy for a
comrade going to his post of increased hazard and toil.

“ Brother William, Archbishop, to his lord and friend, Anselm ;

God's blessing and his own.

“ I have considered long and carefully, as was due in so important a
matter, the subject of the King’s letter and yours, and I have asked the
advice of my own friends and yours upon it. The wish on all sides is, were
it possible, to keep you still among us, and yet not to do anything to oppose

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the Divine Will. But as matters stand, both cannot be fulfilled, and we
therefore, as is fitting and right, submit our will to His ; and in the name
of God and St. Peter, and of all my friends and yours, who love you for
God’s sake, I command you to undertake the pastoral care of the church
of Canterbury, and to receive, according to the custom of the Church, the
episcopal benediction, thenceforward to watch over the welfare of your I
sheep, by Divine Providence, as we believe, committed to you. Farewell,
my beloved.”

Anselm’s nomination took place at Gloucester, on the first
Sunday in Lent, 1093 (March 6). But it was not till the autumn. I
of the same year that he was at length prevailed upon by
William’s fair promises to undertake the primacy. He did 1
homage, according to custom, and on the 4th of December he
was consecrated at Canterbury, by the Archbishop of York, in
the presence of nearly all the bishops of England.

At his consecration, when, according to the Roman ritual,
the book of the Gospels was opened at random, and laid on his I
shoulders, the passage which turned up was the following : —

“ He bade many : and sent his servant at supper time to say to I
them that were bidden, Come ; for all things are now ready. I
And they all with one consent began to make excuse.”

Men took this as an omen of the course of his episcopate.

It was no untrue augury. He stood on the verge of twelve
years of anxious and unwearied service, to be repaid by un-
symathising lukewarmness or fierce persecution. . . . “ From
the first,” says Eadmer, “ he perceived and foretold that many
wrould be the troubles he should have to suffer during his
pontificate.” Coming therefore to a new, and to him an un-
wonted, way of serving God, according to Solomon’s precept,
he stood in fear, and prepared his soul for temptation, know-
ing that all who will live godly in Christ must needs suffer
tribulation. . . .

His anticipations were soon realized. When the contest
began, he had to fight alone. Of the English higher clergy,
two bishops only seem to have shown him any sympathy ; the
rest either stood aloof or openly opposed him. . . .

They had been brought up under William the Conqueror’s
system : under it they had seen cathedrals raised, monasteries
restored, the majesty of the Church and the dignity of her
prelates honoured by the world. And, whatever evils and

ANSELM.

215

abuses existed under it, a desperate conflict with the King
would scarcely seem the most likely way to mend them.
Moreover Lanfranc, still the greatest name in England, the
restorer of the English Church, under whom the best of her
bishops had been trained, had given, as far as we can see, his
countenance and hearty concurrence to the Conqueror’s general
policy towards the Church. This may explain, in some measure,
the part which the bishops took in the struggles of Anselm’s
episcopate. So it is, however : it was not till after his death
that the rulers of the English Church acknowledged him as
champion.

The storm which Anselm had looked for soon broke.
Symptoms of it had shown themselves even before his con-
secration. On the very day of his enthronement at Canterbury
the joy of the people was disturbed by the appearance of the
hateful and dreaded Ralph Flambard, who came to institute
a suit against the Archbishop in the King’s name. And they
were irreconcileably separated. . . . Anselm, on his consecra-
tion, had with difficulty raised 500 marks on his wasted estates
in order to make William the customary present. The King
thought the sum too small, and, as his wont was when he was
offended, refused it. Anselm went to him and pressed him to
take it : though small, it was offered freely, nor would it be the
last : but he intimated plainly, that he would not fall in with
the King’s system of extortion.

“ As a friend,” he said, “you may do what you like with me
and mine : on the footing of a slave, neither me nor mine shall
you have.” “ Keep your money and foul tongue to yourself ;
I have enough for myself : go, get you gone,” was the King’s
answer, in his rough and broken way.1 Anselm left him. He
thought, says Eadmer, of the words of the Gospel, which had
been read on the day when he first entered his cathedral.
“ No man can serve two masters.” “ No one now, at least,”
he said, “ can accuse me of simony. The present which I
meant for him shall go now, not to him, but to Christ’s poor,
for the benefit of his soul.” He tried, however, once more to
regain the King’s favour, but he was told that the only way

1 B offing, i.e. spluttering, “and most when he was in wrath or strife,”
(Robert of Gloucester).

2l6

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

was to double his present ; about this he was firm, and he
left the court in disgrace.

William was beyond measure irritated at this resolute oppo-
sition from a clergyman, an old feeble monk, one, too, whom
he himself had in a moment of weakness placed in the position
to annoy him : but nothing was done for the present to molest
Anselm. He held on his course, discharging the duties of his
office : in the country, living among his tenants, and writing on
theology ; at court, preaching against its luxury and effeminate
fashions, and refusing absolution to the disobedient : doing
whatever he could to repair the mischiefs of the last six years.
But his single efforts were vain against the frightful licence
which prevailed, and the other bishops kept aloof from him.
His only hope was a synod. Could a council be summoned,
men might speak and act in concert who would not act
separately.

a- d. The court was at Hastings, waiting for a wind to carry over

I094 the King to Normandy, and the bishops had been summoned
thither to give him their blessing when he sailed. Anselm
resolved to make one more effort to move William. He
went to him, and solemnly laid before him the state of things
in England : “ Christian religion,” he said, “ had well nigh
perished among the people, and the land was become almost
a Sodom ; the only remedy was in a council of the Church.”
William refused to hear of it. Anselm then entreated him at
least to appoint abbots to the vacant and disorganized monas-
teries. “ What are they to you ? ” was the fierce answer.
“ The abbeys, are they not mine ? May I not do what I please
with them, as you do with your manors?” “ Yours they are,”
said Anselm, “ to protect, but not to lay waste ; for they belong
to God,— to maintain His servants, not to support your wars.”
“Your predecessor dared not have held such language to my
father,” was the reply. “Go, I will do nothing for you.” Anselm
retired and consulted the bishops. They could suggest no other
advice than that of purchasing the King’s favour. The Arch-
bishop indignantly rejected it ; for the honour of the Church,
in justice to his poor tenants, on mere grounds of policy, he
could not listen to so unworthy an expedient. “ My vassals,”
said he. “ have been plundered and made a prey since Lanfranc's

ANSELM.

217

death, and I have nothing to give them : shall I further go
go on to flay them alive ? ” The bishop recommended him to
give, at least, the 500 marks which he had originally offered.
“No,” said he ; “ he has refused it once : it is gone to the poor
now.” William was furious when this was reported to him.
“ Go tell him,” was his message, “ that I hated him yester-
day : henceforth I will hate him daily more and more. Father
and Archbishop he shall be to me no longer. Let him not
wait here to give me his blessing. I will cross without it.”

Such was the opening of the great trial of strength between
the Church and feudalism in England, . . . This apparently
petty dispute about 500 marks . . . led on, by a series of close
j and obvious consequences, to the opening of those great
questions between the spiritual and temporal powers, questions
; among the highest that can engage men’s thoughts, which even
in our own day remain unsettled. . . .

The results of his quarrel with Anselm had taught William
that the Church, humbled as she was, might yet, under able and
resolute guidance, such as she had gained in the Archbishop,
be able to check and thwart him. And her power of main-
taining her ground against him was visibly strengthened by her
union with the rest of the Western Church, and with the Pope.
Whatever measures William might pursue in England, he
could not prevent Anselm from ultimately falling back on an
authority to which it was impossible, without avowed dis-
obedience, to refuse to listen. It became William’s object,
therefore, to perplex and weaken the Archbishop by detaching
him, indirectly if possible, from the Pope, and isolating him
from the rest of Christendom. The circumstances of the times
were favourable to his attempt. There were at the moment
two claimants of the throne of St. Peter, Urban II. and the
anti-Pope Guibert, and the English Church had hitherto
acknowledged neither. Without, therefore, denying the rights
of the Apostolic see, William, acting on the precedent estab-
lished by his father, might require the bishops to suspend
their obedience till he had decided which of the two rivals
had really a claim to it.

But there was a difficulty in the case of the Archbishop. He
had already acknowledged Urban, and had distinctly reserved

2l8

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

his obedience to him before he would accept the primacy.
William, however, was not to be turned aside from his purpose
easily. The point soon came to an issue between him and the
Archbishop, in what manner and with what results will be seen
from the following transaction, the details of which are given
by Eadmer

a. d. On Mid-Lent Sunday, 1095 (March n), the prelates and

1095 nobility of England, with a large concourse of the lower orders,1
met at the hour of prime in the church of Rockingham Castle,
to hold a solemn council. The peers had been summoned to
answer an appeal made to them by the Archbishop for their
judgment and council in a very important question lately
raised between himself and the King. When he had applied
to the King for leave to make the customary journey to Rome
in order to receive the metropolitan pall, the King had asked
him, 44 from which Pope he meant to ask it ?” and on being told
44 from Urban,” he had charged the Archbishop with a breach
of his fealty and allegiance in daring to recognise a Pope not
yet acknowledged by the realm, and told him that he must
either disclaim Urban till the King’s pleasure were known, or
leave England. 44 His obedience to Pope Urban,” the King
said, 44 was incompatible with his duty as a subject.” It was
on this point that the Archbishop had asked and received
permission to seek the advice of his peers. He laid his case
fully before them, reminding them that they had forced him
into his present position, with full warning from him of the
difficulties which were likely to ensue, and with a pledge on
their part of sympathy and aid. 44 It is a grievous thing for
me,” he concluded, 44 to despise and disown the Vicar of St.
Peter; it is a grievous thing to break the faith which I pro-
mised to keep to the King according to God’s law ; nevertheless
it is a grievous thing to be told that I cannot do my duty to
either one of these except at the expense of my allegiance to
the other.”

The bishops, to whom he had especially addressed himself,
declined to give him any counsel for the present, except on
condition of his submitting unconditionally to the King, but
they offered to report what he had said to William, who was
waiting the issue in another part of the castle, and communicate

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what he might say in answer : and thus the question was put
off till the next day.

The following morning the assembly met again. The Arch-
bishop took his seat in the midst, and repeated his request to
the bishops for their counsel. But he again asked it in vain.
They replied as they had done the day before. They would
give no council on religious grounds ( secundum Deum) which
should in any respect oppose the King’s will. They gave their
answer like men who felt the shame and cowardice of their
position. “ They hung down their heads in silence,” says
Eadmer, “ expecting what was coming on them.” Anselm’s
countenance lighted up when he heard their determination, and
raising his eyes to heaven, he solemnly addressed his protest
j to the assembled bishops and nobles : —

“Since you,” he said, who are called the pastors of Christ’s flock, and
you who are styled chiefs among the people, refuse your counsel to me your
I chief, except according to the will of one man, I will betake myself to the
Chief Shepherd and Prince of all, I will fly to the ‘Angel of Great Counsel,’
and from Him I will receive the counsel which I will follow in this my
cause — yea, rather, His cause, and that of His Church. He says to the
most blessed of the Apostles, Peter, ‘ Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build My Church and again to all the Apostles jointly, 4 He who
hears you hears Me; and he who despises you despises Me.’ It was
primarily to St. Peter, and in him to the other Apostles — it is to the Vicar
of St. Peter, and through him to the other bishops who fill the Apostles’
places — that these words, as we believe, were addressed ; but to no
emperor whatsoever, to no king, or duke, or earl. In what point we must
be subject to earthly princes the same Angel of Great Counsel has taught
us, saying, 4 Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ These are the
words and counsels of God, and by them I will abide. Know ye therefore,
all of you, that in the things that are God’s I will render obedience to the
Vicar of St. Peter ; in those that belong of right to the earthly dignity of
my lord the King I will render him both faithful counsel and service, to
the best of my knowledge and power.” . . .

The Archbishop’s speech was received in clamour and
tumult ; no one ventured to answer it ; no one would report
it to the King ; and the assembly broke up in confusion.
Anselm was not daunted ; he went himself to the royal
chamber, and repeated his words in William’s presence.

The day was spent by the King’s party in angry and fruit-
less deliberation. William looked to the bishops to defeat
Anselm on his own ground. The bishops, irritated at once by

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

the hopelessness of their case and by their fear of disappointing
William, were unable to agree among themselves upon the course
to be pursued. The Archbishop, meanwhile, had returned to
the church to wait the result : while his opponents, broken up
into knots of two and three, were engaged in eager and fruit-
less discussion, he remained in his seat, and at last wearied
out with the delay, “ leaning his head against the wall, he fell!
into a calm sleep.” Towards the end of the day the bishops, ;,
with some of the nobility, came to him from the King. “ Their
advice to him,” they said, “was, that he should submit without j
further hesitation to the customs of the realm, which the King j
valued as highly as his crown, and at once give up Urban.” j
Anselm asked till the next day to return a formal answer.
They thought he was wavering, or at a loss for an immediate ;
reply, and urged the King to take advantage of his indecision.
William, bishop of Durham, who had throughout taken the
lead against the Archbishop, and who had engaged to force
him either to commit himself to a disavowal of Urban, or to
resign his ring and crozier, now came to him, and called on
him peremptorily to yield to the King his dignity and preroga-
tive, or to prepare at once for his own just sentence. But he
had overstepped his mark. Anselm answered quietly and
briefly, “ Whosoever wishes to prove that, because I will not
renounce the obedience of the chief Bishop of the venerable
Holy Roman Church, I am therefore breaking faith and
allegiance to my earthly King, let him come forward and he
shall find me ready, as I ought, and where I ought, to render
my answer.” They had nothing to reply, and retired to the
King. A suppressed murmur of indignation ran through the
crowd of the lower orders which had filled the body of the
church the whole day, and had hitherto looked on in silent
sympathy, not daring to express their feelings. At length a
soldier stept out of the throng, and knelt before the Arch-
bishop. “ Lord and Father,” said he, “ thy children humbly
beseech thee by me that thy heart be not troubled by what
thou hast heard, but remember blessed Job, who vanquished
the devil on a dunghill, and avenged Adam, whom the devil
had conquered in Paradise.”

William of Durham had to report to the King, “ tamely and

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221

faintly/’ the complete failure of his attempt. Evening was
closing in, and the assembly again adjourned. The King was
exasperated in the highest degree with the Archbishop, and
scarcely less so with the bishops. At last William of Durham
proposed that Anselm should be deprived by violence, and
driven out of England. But against this the lay barons, who
had been moved by the Archbishop’s calm self-possession and
readiness in answering, protested strongly. “ If this then pleases
you not,” said the King, “what will please you? In this realm
I will endure no equal. It is by following your counsel and
plans that things have been brought to this pass. Away with
you : get you gone, and lay your heads together ; for by God’s
countenance if ye condemn him not, according to my will, I
will condemn you.”

William found it impossible to prevail upon the bishops
to pass sentence on Anselm; but he found them willing to
renounce his obedience. The lay barons, on the other hand,
firmly refused to follow their example. As a feudal superior,
he did not claim their obedience ; as their archbishop and
spiritual father, he had done nothing to forfeit it. This refusal
left the bishops alone in their miserable position, and their
confusion was increased by William’s calling on them severally
to declare whether they renounced their obedience to the
Archbishop unconditionally, or only so far as it implied the
claims of Pope Urban. They were divided in their answers :
those who refused an unconditional renunciation were driven
from William’s presence, and had to regain his favour by large
gifts. But it was an impolitic step on his part, for it broke up
his party among the bishops ; and by forcing them to this
disgraceful alternative, he brought to a head the growing
feeling of disgust and scorn with which their conduct was
viewed even by the nobility. Those especially among them
who had entirely renounced the Archbishop were openly
insulted even in the court : it was plain that their influence
would no longer weigh with any one, or their concurrence
give plausibility to any measure. There remained nothing
farther to be done against the Archbishop, except in the way
of open violence, and men were not yet ripe for that. It was
agreed, iherefore, that matters should be left as they were

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

for the present, and should stand over till after the following
Whitsuntide.

William immediately dispatched two of his chaplains, Gerard, 1
afterwards archbishop of York, and William Warelwast, to
intrigue at Rome. What they said or did there does not
appear. They were men who, as they showed afterwards, ;
would not be scrupulous in serving their master : but the
result of their negociation was the mission, by Pope Urban, 1
of Cardinal Walter of Albano to the King, secretly bearing
with him the metropolitan pall. On landing in England, the
legate took no notice of the Archbishop, though he had to pass
through Canterbury, but went straight to the court. Of his
proceedings there, which were looked upon at the time with
great distrust and dissatisfaction by the Archbishop’s friends,
all we know is, that William was induced by the grant, Eadmer I
says, of special privileges from the Roman see, to acknowledge j
Urban ; but that when he demanded in return the deposition
of Anselm, by the authority, or at least with the consent, of the
xegate, he was at once and peremptorily refused. Disappointed j
and baffled, he seems to have resolved to put the best face
upon matters, and consent to a reconciliation with the Arch-
bishop, which took place shortly after, but not without another
vain attempt, on the part of the bishops, to induce Anselm, by
concealing from him the real state of things at court, to
purchase the King’s favour by a large present.

William’s party wished the Archbishop to receive the pall
from the hands of the King. Anselm objected, for the
privileges and powers which it symbolized and conveyed be-
longed not to the King to give, but to the spiritual ruler of the
Church. It was determined, therefore, that it should be laid
on the high altar of Canterbury, from whence the Archbishop
should take it. On the third Sunday after Trinity the legate,
bearing it in a silver casket, was met at Canterbury by the
Archbishop and bishops of England in procession, bare-footed,
but in their sacerdotal vestments, and conducted to the cathe-
dral, where Anselm, wearing for the first time the symbol of
his metropolitan dignity, celebrated the Holy Eucharist. The
Gospel read in the service was the same passage which had
been taken as the presage of his episcopate at his consecration

ANSELM.

22%

the parable of the Great Supper. Those monitory words were
still to be fulfilled ; the work in which he was engaged, though
so far he had been successful, was not yet over.

The reconciliation did not last long. William continued as
profligate and oppressive as ever, and soon began to molest the
Archbishop personally. For some alleged neglect of feudal
service he was summoned to appear before the King’s court.

“We looked for peace,” said he, on receiving the order, “ and
there is no good; for the time of healing, and behold trouble.”

It was become plain that the King was resolved to crush him :
in England he was fighting single-handed : there was nothing A. d.
left for him but to refer matters to the Pope. We will give his 1096
own account of his position about this time, in an extract from
a letter written by him to Pope Urban, shortly after he had
received the palh

“Holy Father,” he writes, after having explained why lie had not been
able yet to visit Rome, “ it grieves me that I am what I am, that I am
not what I was. It grieves me that I am a bishop, for my sins prevent me
from doing the work of a bishop. When I was in a humble station, I
seemed to be doing something ; now that I am exalted to a high place, I am
weighed down with a load which is too heavy for me, and I do no good,
either for myself or others. ... I long to escape from an intolerable charge,
and to lay down my burden ; on the other hand, I fear to offend God.
The fear of God, which made me undertake it, compels me to keep it. If
[ knew God’s will, I would direct my will and conduct according to it ; but
it is hidden from me, and I know not what to do. I cannot see my way,
ir make out what conclusion I ought to come to.”

He goes on to entreat Urban’s prayers, “ lest, tossed by the
vaves of such thoughts, he should altogether sink, or attain to
lothing and prays that, if at last “ in shipwreck he should
lave to seek refuge from the storm in the bosom of his
nother the Church, he may, for the sake of Him who shed
dis blood for us, find there ready and compassionate aid and
olace.”

Such were his feelings and prospects in 1096. Shortly after,
n that same year, he was forced by William to quit England
.s a banished man. The causes of his exile are thus stated
a a letter, written by him two years after, to Paschal II.,
Jrban’s successor.

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. . . “ I had before my eyes in England a multitude of evils which it was
my province to correct. I could neither correct them, nor yet tolerate them
without sin. The King required me, on the score of duty, to consent to his
will and pleasure in matters which were against the law and will of God :
for, without his command, he would not that any successor of the Apostle :
should be received, or be so styled, in England ; nor that I should hold
communication with him, or obey his decrees. Since he came to the throne,
which is now thirteen years, he has not allowed a council to be held. The
lands of the Church he has given to his vassals ; and if in these and such
like matters I sought counsel, every one refused it to me, even my own
suffragans, except according to his will. Seeing then these and many other
violations of the law and will of God, I asked leave of him to visit the I
Apostolic see, that I might receive advice from thence touching my own soul, 1
and the office enjoined me. The King answered, that I had committed a
crime in merely thus asking leave, and gave me the choice, either of making ‘
amends for this as for an offence, and giving him security that I would never
ask leave again or appeal to the Apostolic see, or else of taking my speedy j
departure from his realm. I chose rather to depart, than to agree to such
a scandalous act. I came to Rome, as you know, and laid the whole matter jl
before my Lord the Pope. The King, as soon as I had left England, laid
hands on the whole archbishopric, and, leaving just enough to clothe and
feed our monks, turned it to his own purposes. Warned and intreated by
my Lord the Pope to alter his conduct, he has scorned to do so, and to this
day holds on in the same course. It is now the third year since I thus left
England ; the little that I brought with me, and the large sums which I have
borrowed and not yet repaid, are all spent ; and thus deeply in debt, but
possessed of nothing, I am living on the bounty of our venerable father, the
Archbishop of Lyons.” . . .

As the letter states, the King, though he had acknowledged
Urban, had treated Anselm’s application as a breach of his
oath of allegiance. The nobility took part against the Arch-
bishop, and his suffragans again deserted him. Their address
to him is too remarkable to be omitted.

“ ‘ Lord father, we well know that thou art a pious and holy man, and
hast thy desires in heaven. We by our relatives, whom we support, by
temporal circumstances in which we are engaged, are withheld from ascend-
ing to your magnanimity, and from making sport of the world. But, if
you are willing to descend to us and imitate our conduct, we will assist you
with the same counsel with which we assist each other, and will succour you
in your embarrassments. But, should you abide by your former principles,
we will not desert our fidelity to the King, nor separate ourselves from him/
Anselm replied, 4 You have answered well : go to your Lord ; I will hold
to my God.’ ” — Mohler , p. 82.

^ On his refusing to comply with the King’s wishes, he was
io97 ordered to be ready to quit England in ten days. Before he

ANSELM.

225

left the court, he went to the King, “with a cheerful and
I pleasant countenance,” and offered him his benediction. “ I
: know not when I shall see you again,” he said, “ and, if you
j refuse it not, I would fain give you my blessing — the blessing
1 of a father to his son, of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the
King of England. The rough King was for a moment touched,

: perhaps awed, by Anselm’s calm but solemn way of closing
| their personal intercourse. He could not refrain from bowing
; his head, while the Archbishop made the sign of the cross
over him, and departed : and they never met again. Anselm
was persecuted to the last with insult and annoyance. As
he was embarking at Dover, William Warelwast, the King’s
! chaplain, who had been living for several days at the Arch-
bishop’s house, caused his luggage to be broken open on the
beach, and searched, in the hope of finding treasure. . . .

Along his road, and in Italy, the Archbishop was received, as
was due to his name and cause, with honour by the great, with
almost enthusiastic love by the poor. Nothing is more striking
in Eadmer’s minute but unstudied narratives, than the inter-
course between the Archbishop and the lower orders, and the
interest he excited among them. Over and above his untiring
sympathy for their wants and wishes, bodily and spiritual, there
1 was a charm in his singular elasticity of character and graceful
I bearing, in his easy gaiety and hearty condescending kindness,
which drew them in throngs around him. “ His countenance
alone,” says his companion, “ even where he was not known,
arrested their admiring attention.” While staying in the camp
of the Duke of Apulia, the very Saracens of the army, some
of whom, had shared his bounty, used to bless him with up-
lifted hands, and kneel before him, as he passed through their
quarters.

But his quarrel was taken up feebly at Rome. He waited

I through two years of negociation, but nothing was done. His
able and seasonable defence of the Latin creed against the
Greeks at the Council of Bari, together with his uncomplain-
ing cheerfulness, had won him the sympathy of the Italian
bishops, and by many of them the indecision and lukewarm-
ness of the Roman court were felt strongly. At the Council
of Lateran, 1099, this feeling showed itself. , . .

A. D,

IO98

IO99

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

“At Easter the customary Roman synod was held; many Gallic and (
Italian bishops were present : at the conclusion the canons which had been
passed were again to be read. As the synod was held publicly in the
church, in the same manner as the assembly of lords and bishops which
Anselm had convened (?) at the commencement of his contest, many of
the people flocked to the important discussion. It was desirable that the
resolutions should be distinctly read : the Bishop of Lucca, who had a
powerful voice, was therefore selected for this office. He had read but a
few decrees when he suddenly paused, and, under violent internal excite-
ment, manifested by his agitated appearance, and by the various expressions 1
of his countenance, addressed the Pope in these violent words : — ‘ What are
we doing? We are loading our people with decrees, and we offer no resist-
ance to the despotism of tyrants. Their oppression and robberies of the
Church are daily reported to this see. As the head of all, you are called !;
upon for counsel and assistance ; but with what success is known and de- j
plored by the whole world. From the ends of the earth there sits one j)
among us, in meek and humble silence. But his silence is a loud cry. j
The greater his humiliation, the milder his mood, the more powerful is he
with God, and the more should he inflame us. It is now two years since
his arrival, and what assistance has he received ? Know ye not all to whom
I allude ? It is to Anselm, the primate of England.’ With these words he
raised his staff, and struck it so violently upon the pavement, that the j
church re-echoed around. The Pope looked towards him and said, 4 It is
sufficient, Reinger, it is sufficient: good counsel shall soon be adopted.’”

— M'dhler , pp. 86, 87.

The Council, however, broke up without any further steps
being taken, and Anselm at length left Italy in despair, and
took refuge, as he states in the letter quoted above, with the
Archbishop of Lyons.

The death of the Pope, which happened shortly afterwards,
relieved William from the difficulty into which he had brought
himself by acknowledging Urban. “ Evil be with him who
cares for it,” was his remark on hearing the news. He was
resolved not to repeat the mistake, especially as the new Pope
was reported to be “ one of Anselm’s sort.” “ His Popedom,”
he said, with an oath, “ shall not override me this time ; now
that I am free, I will remain so.”

But the career of this miserable man was coming to a close.
Men shuddered at his frightful blasphemies and his ferocious
hatred against everything connected with religion ; they waited
with awe to see where his reckless course would end, and
looked out for visible signs of the presence and power of the
evil one to whom he had sold himself. He had sworn with an

ANSELM, .

227

oath on recovering from his last sickness, “ that God should
never have any good in him, for all the evil which He had
brought upon him.” “ From that time,” says Eadmer, “ he
succeeded in everything he wished for or attempted. The very
wind and sea seemed to serve his will, as if God would leave
him without excuse, by granting all that he wished for.” “ Yet,”
said those around him, “ never a night came but he lay down
a worse man than he rose ; and never a morning but he rose
worse than he lay down.”

He heard of Urban’s death in October, 1099. On the
2d of August following he rode out at mid-day, after a wild
debauch, to hunt in the New Forest — the chase which his father
had made by laying waste hearth and burial-ground, and in
which two of his family had already perished ; — in the evening
his body was found pierced with an arrow through the heart.

Henry Beauclerk (the successor of William Rufus) was the A. d.
youngest of the Conqueror’s sons, and not the least remarkable of 1100
that remarkable family, who collectively present a fair specimen
of the race of stirring and adventurous men of whom they were
the head ; a race whose banners, in the eleventh century, had
been seen in almost every country round the Mediterranean—
gens fere orhem terrarum hello pervagata — who had met and
humbled alike Greek and Latin emperors, soldans of Syria and
Africa, and had set up their thrones east, west, and south, in
Russia and England, in Naples, Palermo, and Antioch; at
once the unscrupulous persecutors of the Church and its most
enthusiastic liegemen and soldiers. . . . Henry had been schooled
by his fortunes. In his youth he was the scholar of the family,
the man of peace and studious tastes, the frequenter of learned
companies, the dabbler in classical quotations and snatches
of philosophy ; whose attainments, if they were somewhat
“ tumultuary if, like Charlemagne, he seldom ventured “ to
read aloud, or to chant, except in an under-tone” — were yet
sufficient, in a prince, to vindicate the “ fair clerk’s ” right to
his name. Yet he was no mere idle dilettante or pedant :
however loudly his rough brothers might laugh when they
heard the. saws about “ illiterate kings being crowned asses,”
with which he used to entertain his practical but not very
accomplished parent, the dealer in proverbs was. shrewd and

Q 2

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

wily withal : his was not a speculative and abstract love of
philosophy, which would be contented in the retirement of the
bower or cloister; he was not without hopes that England
would some day be Plato's blissful commonwealth, where a
philosopher should be king, or the king a philosopher. His
father was alive to his talents : “ Never mind, child, you will
be King yet," was the consolatory prediction with which he j
bade his son dry his eyes, when he found him once weeping at
some affront from his brothers. . . .

The news of William’s death brought with it the expectation
of universal confusion ; most of the court dispersed hurriedly to
their homes to prepare for the worst. Henry was on the spot
and ready. The day William was killed he claimed the keys
of the treasury. The keeper opposed him, and reminded him
that he had sworn homage to his elder brother Robert. Henry
answered by drawing his sword ; he was not going to lose his
father’s sceptre by frivolous procrastination.

Robert’s title, after all, was an imperfect one ; his father had
expressly excluded him from the crown of England : and, any-
how, it rested with the bishops and great men to accept or
refuse him. Personally there were many things against him ;
his indolent spendthrift ways, his childish feebleness, and,
above all, he was away — “ the great men knew not what had
become of him” — and England wanted a governor at once.
Henry was willing to be King of England : he was a lit man to
be a king, resolute and steady, and, except with the riotous
companions of King Rufus, popular. Even the Saxons felt
kindly towards a born Englishman, a son too of William the
King: and he was a friend of justice and, quiet : his soul
abhorred the loud, coarse, impudent profligacy which had
been rampant in his brother’s palaces. The whole crew of the
dead king’s companions, male and female, were at once merci-
lessly chased away ; “ the use of lights at night restored in the
court.” He promised a strong and righteous government, fair
customs to the crown vassals, to the people the “old laws pf
King Edward,” and liberty to the Church. The clergy and
great men unanimously agreed to have Henry. Three days
after William’s death he was “ consecrated to be King,” at
Westminster, with “ great rejoicings of the people." Robert

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229

hastened home, but it was too late ; his chance was gone, and
his place filled by one who could keep it. . . .

Henry had his difficulties; but he was fully able to cope
with them. The line that he had taken — his military character
— his reforms and popular concessions — the prospect of a
strict government — his professed sympathy with the clergy
and the Anglo-Saxon population — his quiet Saxon Queen,
with her monastic education and taste — drew on him the
angry contempt of the great Norman nobility. They had
been taken by surprise — many of them at least — -in electing
him. Robert’s easy sway was much more suited to their
unruly independence. Till after the conquest of Normandy,1
“both while a youth and as King,” says a contemporary,
“ Henry was held in the utmost contempt.” But he was not
a King to be despised, as his barons found to their cost;
the “Lion of Justice” could use his fangs and claws on
occasion. . . .

He made himself felt in England for good as well as for evil.
He at least allowed no oppression but his own. . . . The Saxon
chronicler, who records the Leicestershire assize, where the
King’s justiciary “ hanged more thieves than were ever known
before,” — many of them, so “ true men ” said, very unjustly, —
and who complains of the misery of that “heavy year,” —
“ first the wretched people are bereaved of their property, and
then are they slain,” — speaks probably the voice of the lower
orders in his concluding eulogy on Henry. “ A good man he
was, and there was great dread of him ; no man durst do wrong
with another in his time. Peace he made for man and beast.
Whoso bore his burden of gold and silver, no one durst say
ought to him but good.”

His position, in respect of the aristocracy, dictated his
Church policy. His jealous and quarrelsome nobility, with
their feuds and seignorial rights, threatened to split up the
kingdom into a number of independent principalities like the
great fiefs of France. He saw clearly enough that this would
be ruinous ; that the thing for England was to make the crown
all-powerful, and next, as far as could be, respectable and

1 The conquest of Normandy was completed by the battle of Tenchebray,
in the July of 1106, when Duke Robert was made prisoner. — C. M. Y.

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

popular. And for this he could not spare the Church ; to a
certain point she was his natural ally — a force powerful, both
from its activity and from its dead weight also, on the side of
order. Her higher clergy were an aristocracy of peace, con-
trasted with the military aristocracy; not, like the barons,
hereditary, but continually replenished from the tried servants
of the crown, and defenceless if refractory. . . .

Henry meant in his own way to reform the Church. He
was ready to appoint worthy and respectable men to preside
over her government, friends and chaplains of his own, dis- S
creet able men of business, who had travelled and been ||
charged with embassies, and learned something of the world, ;
and who by their princely state and magnificence and public
spirit would keep up the dignity of the Church and their
order. Such were Henry’s favourite bishops. . . .

But further, the King was a man of learning, and he would
not be without learned bishops also : he brought Gilbert the
Universal, “ whose equal in science was not to be found
between England and Rome,” from the schools of Nevers to
be Bishop of London. Gilbert justified his patron’s choice,
and moreover left at his death immense wealth, which Henry
seized, — “ the bishop’s boots also, filled with gold and silver,
being carried to the Exchequer.” But at the same time Henry
could fully appreciate a higher and stricter character, and it
was quite to his taste to have the metropolitan see filled by
such a man as Anselm. . . .

On coming to the throne he at once recalled the Arch-
bishop. Anselm found things changed : from William’s reckless
tyranny, England had passed under the rule of a long-sighted
statesman, who was bent on crushing licence ; a man above
the gross vices of his time ; utterly despising the fashionable
taste for military glitter and fame ; professedly a man of
peace, but not afraid of war; the avowed patron and friend
of the Church. The prospect seemed hopeful ; Anselm’s
plans of reform in the English Church might now be carried
into effect. Henry, from his gentle temper, was more likely to
enter into them than his father. But very few days passed
before formidable difficulties began to show themselves.
Anselm, however, threw himself heart and soul into Henry’s

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interest; mediated between him and his suspicious subjects ;
received in the name of the nobility of the realm, and the
great body of the people, the King’s plighted hand, and his
promise to govern by “ just and holy laws ; ” accompanied him
to the field when Robert invaded England ; kept the change-
able and faithless barons to their duty, and induced Robert
to consent to a reconciliation. In the only critical moment of
Henry’s reign, he owed his fortunes mainly to the Archbishop.

The difficulties alluded to arose from the question of in-
vestiture. Henry, following the analogy of lay fiefs, required
that Anslem should receive the archbishopric afresh from the
hands of his new lord, and do homage for it, according to the
usuage of former kings. . . . These feudal customs had been
hitherto exercised without protest in England ; Anselm him-
self had received investiture from William Rufus. But the
case was now altered ; he had assisted at councils where the
canons against investiture were confirmed and republished,
where those who gave and those who received it were alike
excommunicated. He had now but one course — to obey the
canons and refuse Henry’s demand. His experience, too, in
his last dispute, had taught him the real importance of the
question ; and he had made up his mind, while supported by
the Pope, to hazard everything in trying it.

The Archbishop’s objection to investiture was a sufficiently
provoking derangement to Henry’s plans. To give up what
his predecessors had possessed was a check at starting ; to
resist was to come into collision with the body he wished of all
things to have on his side ; with Anselm too, an indomitable,
fearless old man, a confessor in the freshness of triumph.
Henry could not yet afford to break with him openly, but he had
not the slightest intention of yielding the point : “ it was worth
half his realm.” Negociation with the Pope opened a hope-
ful prospect of delay; it was a course to which the Arch-
bishop could not object; if it gained nothing else, time of
itself was well worth gaining. Anselm knew well that this was
“ mere trifling ; ” but his position was obedience to superior
authority, and, besides, he did not wish to bring suspicion on
his loyalty. It was settled, therefore, that matters should remain
in abeyance till an answer could be received from Rome.

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Henry stood on the “ usages of the realm : ” he was doing
no ,more than all his predecessors, Saxon and Norman, had
done ; requiring no more than Anselm himself had yielded to
William Rufus. He was anxious, he said, to honour the
Roman Church as his father had done, to profit by the pre-
sence and counsel of his Archbishop , but, come what might,
his “ usages,” the honour of his crown, must remain inviolate ;
their surrender could not be a question with him : he did not
send to Rome to ask them as a concession from the Pope, but
to see what could be done to enable Anselm with a good con-
science to submit to them. If the Church decrees could not
be dispensed with, he regretted it ; he was loth to depart from
the Pope’s obedience ; but whatever resolution Anselm or the
Pope might adopt, he must abide by the “ usages.” . . .

Henry’s envoys returned, probably with all the success he
expected. The Pope was inflexible, but his long letter against
investitures had as little effect on the King. Henry, without
taking the slightest notice of it, turned upon Anselm, coaxing,
threatening, bullying, sending message after message through
the bishops, with the object, if he would not submit, of getting
him out of England. He was loth to repeat in earnest his
brother’s rough game ; it Was his way to “ worry rather with
words than with arms but he tried to intimidate. Anselm,
however, was immoveable ; “ he could not leave his church ;
he had work to do there, and there he must abide till forced
from it.” At last a new embassy was proposed ; men were
to go of higher note. Perhaps the Pope would be moved
when he was told that, unless he relented, Anselm must be
driven out of England, and the Roman see lose the obedience
of the whole realm, with the advantage which it yearly derived
from it. Anselm was to send his representatives, if it were
but to testify to the King’s determination— a trusted monk
named Baldwin and another. The King’s commissioners were
three bishops : the chief was . . . Gerard, . . . archbishop of
York, a man of slippery, doubtful ways, and unhappy end,
shrewd and plausible, and with much reputation for learning.
“ No man in England might be of more use to the Church,”
writes Anselm to the Pope; “and I hope in God he has the
will, as he has the power.” But he was an ambitious and

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233

unsteady churchman, as easily tempted as he was easily
frightened.

. . . The other two were Robert of Chester and Robert of
Norwich, men of very questionable respectability.

They returned with fresh letters for the King and the
Archbishop, and the nobility and higher clergy were imme-
diately summoned to meet in London. They found that the
King refused to communicate the contents of his letter, but
again required unqualified submission from Anselm, under
pain of expulsion. To Anselm the Pope wrote that he had
peremptorily refused to comply with Henry’s demands.

“ Only a few days before, ” he said, “ it had again been decreed in council,
that churches and church benefices were not to be received by the clergy
from lay hands. This practice was the root of simony, a temptation to the
clergy to pay court to power. Princes must not come between the Church
and her offices, nor make themselves channels of what is really Christ’s gift,
and has His stamp upon it.” “ For,” he continues, “ as through Christ alone
the first door is opened by Baptism into the Church, and the last by death
into Eternal Life, so through Christ alone should the door-keeper of His fold
be appointed, by whom, not for the hire of the flock, but for(i Christ’s sake,
the sheep may go in and out till they are led to Everlasting Life.”

So wrote Paschal to the Archbishop. The letter was handed
about and eagerly read, and in a few days it came out that he
had written to the King to the same effect. Matters seemed
to have come to a crisis, when the three bishops came forward
to make an important communication : they had received, they
said, privately and secretly from the Pope, a verbal message to
Henry, to assure him “ that so long as he acted as a good King,
and appointed religious prelates, the Pope would not enforce
the decrees against investiture ; but that he was obliged to
hold another language in public, and that he could not give
the privilege in writing, lest other princes should use it to the
prejudice of the Church.” This startling announcement, to
which the King’s envoys pledged their faith and honour as
bishops, raised a storm of debate in the assembly. Anselm’s
representatives had heard nothing of the message, which was
inconsistent with everything which had passed in public be-
tween them and the Pope. Baldwin especially was indignant :
the bishops, he said, were breaking their canonical allegiance,
trifling with the Pope’s honour. The altercations became hot

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and fast. Baldwin insisted that nothing could supersede the
authority of documents sealed with the Pope’s signet : the
King’s party were fierce and insulting in their rejoinder; “The
word of three bishops ought to weigh more than bescribbled
sheep-skins with a lump of lead at the bottom, backed by the
testimony of two paltry monks, who, when they renounced the
world, lost all weight as evidence in business of the world.”
“ But this is no secular matter,” said Baldwin. “Sir,” was the
answer, “ we know you to be discreet and a man of business ;
yet still even order requires that we should set more by the
evidence of an archbishop and two bishops than by yours.”
“ But what becomes of the evidence of the letters, when we
refuse to receive the evidence of monks against bishops?” was
the sneering reply. “ How could we receive that of sheep-
skins?” A cry of disgust and indignation burst from the
monks who were looking on. “Woe, woe !” they exclaimed;
“are not the Gospels written on sheep-skins?”

Thus things were more embarrassed than ever, and the
Archbishop thrown into a most painful state of uncertainty.
What was he to believe ? the Pope’s letters, or the solemnly-
pledged word of the bishops ? It was plain that things could
not go on without a fresh embassy, and a fresh embassy
accordingly was sent. Anselm wrote, detailing the transaction,
and earnestly begging for some clear and definite directions
how he was to act.

“I am not afraid,” he wrote, “ of banishment, or poverty, or torments, or
death : for all these, God comforting me, my heart is ready, in obedience
to the Apostolic see, and for the liberty of my mother the Church :
all I ask is certainty, that I may know, without doubt, what course I ought
to hold by your authority.”

It may occur, perhaps, to some of our readers, Did the
bishops after all speak the truth? Was this a trick and
manoeuvre of the Pope to keep on’ good terms with England
during his struggle with the Emperor ? The supposition seems
to us to be quite negatived both by Paschal’s persona]
character and by the subsequent events. Paschal certainly
was not a great man ; he was diplomatic and wavering, and
dull to the claims of his own cause except when at his very
door ; but still he was in earnest, and there is no reason to

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235

suspect him of an act of such incredible folly, which could not
be kept secret, and must prove ruinous to his influence and
cause whenever known. Further, he at once and most
solemnly denied it, and excommunicated the bishops, without
any protest as far as appears on their part : on the contrary,
both Eadmer and William of Malmesbury take it for granted
that, at the time they were writing, the bishops’ story was a
notorious and confessed falsehood ; nor is there anything in
the character of the envoys to redeem their credit.

During the absence of the new embassy, things were taking
a turn in England which Henry could scarcely have expected.
He had early in his reign nominated one William Gifford, who
had repeatedly held the office of Chancellor under the pre-
ceding kings, to the bishopric of Winchester. Gifford refused
to receive it, as it must come to him from the hands of the
King; but on Anselm’s return to England the clergy and
people of the see earnestly petitioned the Archbishop that
they might have Gifford for bishop, and he was at last pre-
vailed upon to take the office. But he still would not consent
to receive the ring and staff from Henry ; however, for what
reason it does not appear, the King connived at his receiving
investiture in the cathedral from the hands of the Archbishop.
But his consecration was deferred. Subsequently to this, on
the strength of the report brought from Rome by the bishops,
Henry had invested two of his chaplains with the bishoprics of
Salisbury and Hereford, and he now called on Anselm to con-
secrate the three bishops elect. Anselm remonstrated : he was
ready to consecrate Gifford ; but as to the other two, it had
been agreed between him and the King that, till the Pope’s
decision had been finally ascertained, he at least should not
be expected to sanction lay investiture. Henry swore that he
should consecrate all or none : he still refused, and the King
ordered Gerard of York to consecrate. This was a gross
infringement of the metropolitan rights of Canterbury — a point
keenly felt at the time — but Gerard was ready. The tide,
however, was turning. To Henry’s surprise and indignation,
the bishop elect of Hereford, a member of his court and the
Queen’s Chancellor, brought back the ring and crozier to the
King, and resigned them, expressing his sorrow that, as things

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then stood, he had ever consented to take them ; to go on, and
receive consecration from Gerard, would be receiving a curse j
instead of a blessing. He of course was disgraced and obliged
to leave the court. But he was not alone. On the day of :
consecration, at the very last moment, when everything was
prepared for the ceremony, and the Church was thronged with
spectators, Gifford’s conscience misgave him ; he interrupted J
the service, and refused Gerard’s benediction. Confounded I
and indignant, the officiating bishops retired, without finishing j
the ceremony for Roger, who had been appointed to Salisbury.

“ At this a shout burst from the whole multitude who had come
together to see the issue : they cried out with one voice that
William was for the right, that the bishops were no bishops, j
but perverters of justice.” With changed countenance, and
burning with rage at the insult, they rushed to the King to ;
make their complaint. Gifford wTas summoned to Henry’s pre- j
sence ; menaces on all sides were showered on him. “ There
he stood,” says Eadmer ; “ but he would not flinch from the j
right : so he was despoiled of all he had and driven from the
realm.” Anselm protested strongly and repeatedly, of course
without effect ; yet Henry had learnt what he had scarcely
looked for. If the court clergy were becoming infected with
Anselm’s views of Church and State, and were beginning to
turn on their patron, it might be time to think of some rougher
and more summary way of finishing the dispute.

Henry, the most dissembling of men, was visibly showing
his impatience : it was at all events necessary to get Anselm
out of England, out of sight, and cut off from communication
with the clergy. On some trifling pretext, the King suddenly
made his appearance at Canterbury ; his real intention was, by
some means or other, to drive the Archbishop away. A letter
had by this time come from the Pope ; the King refused to see
it. Anselm, on the other hand, dared not to break the seal, for
its contents might involve an immediate rupture ; and further,
to avoid the suspicion of forgery, he wished it to come sealed
into the King’s hands. But Henry had come to settle matters.
He must have his own, he said, whether the Pope agreed or
not. “ Let every one who loved him know for certain that
whoever refused him his paternal customs was his enemy.”

ANSELM.

237

Rumours were becoming rife, among those most in his confi-
dence, of intentions of violence ; the quarrel was waxing hot,
and the future looked dismal and full of danger. “ The very
nobles,” says Eadmer, “on whose advice Henry depended,

I have seen in tears, at the thought of the mischief which was
at hand.” Special prayers even were offered up for the crisis.

But in the midst of this excitement Henry all at once changed
his tone; he took up the language of entreaty. “Would the
Archbishop go to Rome himself and try his influence there ? ”
Anselm answered, that if his peers thought it right for him to
go, he was ready, “as God should give him strength ;” but that
“ even if he should reach the threshold of the Apostles, he could
do nothing to the prejudice of the liberty of the Church or his
own honour : he could but bear witness to facts.” The reply
was that nothing more was required ; the King’s commissioner
would be there also, to plead for his master.

Four days after this had been settled, he was on horseback, a.d.
leaving Canterbury to cross again the length of Europe, a 1103
feeble time-worn man on the verge of seventy, but fearless and
cheerful as ever. The intense heat of the season stopped his
progress, and gave him a month of quiet in his old home at
Bee ; but he was on his way again before the summer was over.
Henry had now gained his point in having got Anselm out of
England : he had no wish that he should be seen and heard
at Rome ; it would be much more to his purpose if Anselm
could be detained in Normandy or France. We find, inci-
dentally, from one of Anselm’s letters, that the King had
suddenly become anxious about “his Archbishop’s” health,
and the fatigues of so long and rough a journey; he strongly
recommended the Archbishop to spare himself, to halt some-
where, and transact his business at Rome by envoys. Anselm’s
answer is dated from the passes of Mont Cenis : he is thank-
ful for the King’s care for him, and assurances of his esteem ;
but he was too far on his way now to think of turning back ;
he must go on to his journey’s end. At Rome he found his
old companion in these transactions, William Warelwast, and
in due course the subject was brought before the Roman court.
Warelwast urged the old ground of usage : moreover, the
English kings were distinguished for their munificence to the

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Holy See ; and he knew for certain, he said, that if investitures
were not allowed, it would much the worse for the Romans,
and they would be sorry for it when too late. He had his
friends in the Curia ; his words were received with encourage-
ment ; many of the cardinals thought that the 44 wishes of so
great a man as the King of England were on no consideration
to be overlooked.” Anselm was silent ; Paschal also had not
spoken ; and Warelwast was emboldened. 44 Let what will be ;
said,” he exclaimed with vehemence, 44 know all present, that
if it should cost him his realm, King Henry will not lose inves-
titures.” 44 Sayest thou that King Henry will not give up J
investitures?” was the quick rejoinder: 44 nor before God, J
will Pope Paschal, to save his head, let him have them.” 44The j
sound of which words exceedingly dismayed William.” He
obtained, however, for Henry a personal exemption for a time
from excommunication. Anselm was ordered to hold commu- j
nion with him, but not with any of the other offenders, who
were to remain under excommunication till the Archbishop saw
grounds to take off the sentence.

Warelwast worked hard, after Anselm had left Rome, to gain
some further concessions : but all he could get was a kind of
coaxing letter from the Pope to Henry, to smooth down the
sternness of refusal with compliment and congratulation about
his successes, and his 44 distinguished and glorious consort,”
and the son she had just brought him — 44 whom we have been
told you have named William, after your illustrious father ” —
appealing to his devotional feelings, assuring him that he was
parting with nothing really valuable, and promising him on
his compliance to indulge him with any favour he might ask,
besides the Apostolic absolution for himself and his Queen,
and the protection of the Roman Church for his son. The
Pope scarcely knew King Henry.

Warelwast overtook the Archbishop’s company, who were
escorted through the Apennines by the Great Countess
Matilda, and travelled with him as far as Lyons. There he
delivered to him a message from Henry — the last expedient, if
the Roman negociations failed. 44 The King earnestly desired
his return to England if he was willing to do all that his pre-
decessors had done to former kings.” 44 Is that all?” said

ANSELM.

239

Anselm. “ I speak to a man of understanding,” was the
reply. It was intelligible enough ; and accordingly Anselm
took up his abode a second time with the Archbishop of Lyons,
and Warelwast returned to England.

Thus was Anselm a second time cast out to eat the bread of
strangers, thrown aside, and forced to sit by, checked, humbled,
and sick at heart, while the great powers in Church and State
exchanged their messages of civility, and carried on the game
for which he has suffered by the most approved rules of poli-
tical manoeuvre. Anselm felt most strongly the necessity of
releasing the Church from the feudal yoke ; but his line from
the first had been, not his own view of the matter, but simply
obedience to the law of the Church, as soon as it came before
him, and to the Pope. Only let the Pope speak out, and he was
ready (as he showed afterwards) to abide by his decision.
“ You tell me,” says he in one of his letters to England, with
unwonted sharpness, “ that they say that I forbid the King to
grant investitures. Tell them that they lie. It is not I who
forbid the King ; but having heard the Vicar of the Apostles in
a great council excommunicate all who give or receive investi-
ture, I have no mind to hold communion with excommunicates,
or to become excommunicate myself.”

But Paschal’s policy was a cruel and embarrassing one :
with his hands full at home, he was afraid of the King of
England, the son of him who had kept Gregory VII. at
bay : his words were strong, but he shrunk from acting. He
had confirmed and republished most emphatically, and without
exception, the canons against investiture, and solemnly declared
bis intention to enforce them. Plenry from the first had held
but one language : he wanted no compromise ; “ nothing in the
vorld should make him give up his usages.” And yet Paschal
lad allowed, or rather encouraged, embassy after embassy, in
mdless succession, to come with its hollow compliments and
mvarying message, and to return, as it was intended, with a letter
>f expostulation or, at most, distant menace. Nothing could
>etter suit with Henry’s wishes and policy : and thus Anselm,
vhom the Roman court was well content to see the champion
>f ecclesiastical liberty, was in reality left to fight his battle as
e best could alone, with words indeed of respect and praise,

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

but with little hearty aid, and with instructions which, he
complained, only embarrassed him.

And in England friends and foes alike tried his patience,
teasing, mistaking, and criticising him. The King, greatly
relieved by his absence, sent fresh embassies to Rome, and
seized the Archbishop’s revenue for his own use, as if he had
been a convicted traitor ; 66 yet,” says Eadmer, “ with consi-
deration and tenderness.” At the same time in his letters he
was as bland and smooth as ever ; so full of respect and
attachment to Anselm, so grieved that he could not be with
him as Lanfranc had been for many years with his father.
Meanwhile he had no objection that Anselm should be allowed
what was “ convenient ” out of the revenues of Canterbury.
But Anselm’s questions to him as to his intentions for the
future were asked in vain. Then, on the other hand, Queen
Matilda — good Queen Molde ” — amiable, warm-hearted, re-
ligious lady, could not live without her venerable confessor.
She could not understand why he should stand out so obsti-
nately against her lord and master’s kind wishes. She argued
with the Archbishop “ to soften what with all respect she must
call his iron heart.” She incessantly importuned him, with a
lady’s impatience of reasons and means, to find “ some way by
which neither he might do wrong, nor the rights of majesty be
infringed.” His poor monks, too, at Canterbury, were sore
beset by the King’s exactions : they were perplexed in con-
science, jealousies and complaints wTere becoming rife, every-
thing was getting into disorder ; they wanted their head among
them, and their very loyalty and affection made them fretful
and peevish, that in spite of the King he did not return.
Letter after letter he had to write to Prior Ernulf, and to “ his
dearest brethren and children,” quieting their fears, exhorting
them to manly endurance, soothing their pettishness, cheering
them with hopes of the future ; remembering especially, in his
characteristic way, the young boys and children, and sending
messages to them, “ not to forget what they had heard from
him.” Himself the greatest sufferer, all looked to him to re-
ceive their complaints, to keep up their spirits, to throw himself
into their difficulties, and point out a clear way out of them.
Distrust, irritation, perplexity, all found their wTay to his ears.

ANSELM.

241

The sufferings and scandal of the day were all laid at his
door — thrown in his teeth by ill-nature, gossip, or impatient
zeal. “ Was he so holy that he could not do as Lanfranc had
done ? ” “ Was he such a coward as to fly from his post at

the word of one William?” “ How could he bear the thoughts
of the Judgment-seat, and the souls which he might have
rescued by his presence in England ? ” Such were the ques-
tions addressed to him by his own party, while critics of
another sort charged him with “ letting wicked clerks invade
and lay waste the Church without rising up against them,”
while — what was only less mischievous and culpable than his
negligence — he was depriving the King of his rights. The
trouble which he endured shows itself in his correspondence,
in the quiet, nervous plainness of language which marks strug-
gling but repressed vexation. His great comfort during these
years of exile was the steady attachment of Gundulf, bishop of
Rochester. He was not a man to take a lead or throw much
weight into either scale in a contest like the present; but in
him the Archbishop had a friend who had long loved and
revered him ; in whom he could place implicit confidence ; a
man of plain good sense, whose unpretending yet active
services in matters of routine business he could always
count on.

At length, after waiting a year and a half at Lyons, Anselm
resolved to act on his own responsibility. The King, of course,
showed no intention of yielding, or of giving up the archiepis-
copal revenues which he had seized. The utmost the Pope
would do, after all the delay, was to excommunicate by name
the King’s advisers, the chief of whom was the crafty Earl
of Mellent. The King’s sentence was delayed, so he wrote
Anselm, “ because another embassy (the second since Anselm
had left Rome) was expected.” “ On receiving this letter,”
says Eadmer, “ Anselm saw that it was useless waiting at
Lyons for hefp from Rome, especially as he had repeatedly
sent agents and letters to the Pope about the settlement of
this business, and up to this time nothing was vouchsafed to
him, save from time to time a promise of something held out
by way of consolation.” For the third time he had called
upon Henry to restore the lands of Canterbury. “ The cause

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

is not mine but God’s, entrusted to me, and I fear to delay
long to cry to God. Force me not, I pray you, to cry sorrow-
fully and reluctantly, ‘ Arise, O God, and judge Thou Thy
cause.’” Henry had returned no answer save his usual smooth
evasions — blandientem sibi dilationem : and Anselm then re-
solved to approach the borders of Normandy and fulfil his
threat.

This alarmed Henry : an excommunication from Anselm at
this time would have been a serious embarrassment to him.
He had enemies enough on all sides looking out for an oppor-
tunity of attacking at advantage a power “ which was not loved
over much,” — potestatem non adeo amatam,— which threatened
or had injured them. And he was, besides, on the point of
attempting the conquest of Normandy. His sister, the Countess
d. of Blois, mediated, and a conference was arranged between him
05 and the Archbishop at a castle called L’Aigle. Henry was all
respect and complaisance, expressed the greatest delight at
meeting Anselm, and would always go himself to the Arch-
bishop’s quarters, instead of sending for him. The result was
that the revenues of the see were given up, and Anselm
restored to the King’s favour.

But things were far from being settled. Henry was not a
man to yield while a single chance remained to be tried. The
old question was still open ; there must be fresh communi-
cations with Rome, which were put off as long as possible.
Meanwhile Anselm could not return to England. Henry
made the most of the interval. He was just at this time
in pressing need of money for his war in Normandy, and the
Church, of course, did not escape “ in the manifold contribu-
tions, which never ceased, before the King went over to Nor-
mandy, and while he was there, and after he came back again.” 1
Henry had some skill in inventing, on such emergencies,
new foris-fadci— matters for fine and forfeiture — questions for
the “ Curia Regis” to settle betweeen him and his lieges. On
this occasion he was seized with a zeal for Church discipline.
Many of the parochial clergy were living in disobedience to
the canons of a late synod at London, which had forbidden
clerical marriage : “ This sin the King could not endure to
1 Saxon Chronicle.

ANSELM,

243

see unpunished.” So, to bring the offenders to their duty, of
his own mere motion he proceeded to mulct them heavily. The
tax, however, proved unfortunately not so productive as he had
anticipated ; and therefore, changing his mind, he imposed the
assessment on the whole body of the parochial clergy, innocent
as well as guilty, throughout the kingdom. Anselm expostu-
lated : “ The offending clergy ought to be punished,” he said,
“not by the officers of the Exchequer, but by their bishops.”
Henry, in his reply, is much surprised at the Archbishop’s
objections : he thought he was only doing his work for him,
labouring in his cause, but he would see to it; “however,
whatever else had happened, the Archbishop’s people had been
left in peace.” But ‘as to the mass of the clergy, seizures,
imprisonment, and every kind of annoyance, had enforced the
tax-gatherer’s demands. Two hundred priests went barefooted
in procession, in alb and stole, to Henry’s palace, “ with one
voice imploring him to have mercy upon them but they were
driven from his presence : “ the King perhaps was busy.”
They then, clothed with “ confusion upon confusion,” besought
the intercession and good offices of the Queen. She was moved
to tears at their story, but she was afraid to interfere in their
behalf. And, what is a still greater proof of Henry’s tyranny,
the court party of the clergy, and among them the excom-
municated bishops, were at last beginning to turn their eyes
towards Anselm. A letter was sent to him, about this time,
signed by several of the bishops, entreating him to return, as
the only means of remedying the misery of the English Church.
“We have waited for peace, but it has departed far from us.
Laymen have broken in even to the altar. . . . Thy children,”
they continue, “will fight with thee the battle of the Lord;
and if thou art gathered to thy fathers before us, we will
receive of thy hand the heritage of thy labours. Delay thou
no longer ; thou hast no excuse before God : we are ready
not only to follow, but to go before thee, if thou command
us, . . . for now we are seeking in this cause not what is ours,
but what is the Lord’s.” Among the names attached to this
letter are those of Gerard of York, Herbert of Norwich, and
Robert of Chester.

At length the envoys returned from Rome with Paschal’s
r 2

244

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

final instructions to Anselm. He was firm in prohibiting
investiture, but yielded the point of homage. “ We must
stoop,” he wrote to Anselm, “ to raise the fallen ; but though
in doing so we are bent, and appear to be falling, we do not
really lose our uprightness.” Anselm felt as strongly about
homage as about investiture ; but it was his duty to obey, and
he prepared to do so. He was long detained in Normandy
by a desperate illness, for his health, never strong, was now
completely broken by anxiety and hardship, and Henry began
to fear that he should after all lose the credit of his recon-
ciliation and reluctant concessions, and should have to bear ;
the odium of having driven a man, whose character and pro-
longed sufferings had been year after year rousing more and
more the sympathy of England and France, to die an exile.

A- D- But Anselm recovered, and in the autumn of 1106 returned to

1 106 England. A further delay of a year took place before matters
were adjusted. Henry was during part of this time in Nor-
mandy, where the decisive battle of Tinchebrai placed his
brother Robert and his dominions in his power ; and later, the
presence of Paschal at the Council of Troyes gave the King a
new pretext for postponement. At length, on the first three

1107 days of August, 1107, a great council was held in London,
where the subjects in question were debated between Henry
and the bishops, the Archbishop not being present. A party
among the bishops still held out for the old usages, but they
were overruled. Henry, in the presence of Anselm, and in a
larger assembly to which the commons were admitted, solemnly
“ allowed and ordained that no one should hereafter for ever
receive investiture of bishopric or abbey, by ring and crozier,
from the King, or any lay hand;” and Anselm agreed not to
refuse consecration to bishops or abbots who had done
homage to the King for their benefices. So ended Anselm’s
long battle, just soon enough to give him a short breathing-
time before he was called away. . . .

The struggle ended, Anselm applied himself during the
short time that was left him to carry out those great objects
which had given importance to the contest— the reformation
of the clergy and the protection of the poor : and, to do Henry
justice, it must be said that in the latter point, while the

ANSELM, ;

245

Archbishop lived, he seconded him rigorously. But Anselm’s
task was now ended. Soon after his return he buried his friend
Gunduif, and in little more than a year he followed him. We
shall give the account of his last days in the words of one wTho
had shared his sufferings, and who watched by his death-bed
— the monk Eadmer.

“ During these events ” (the final settlement of his dispute with the King)
“he wrote a treatise Concerning the Agreement of Foreknowledge, Pre-
destination, and the Grace of God, with Free-will; in which, contrary
to his wont, he found difficulty in writing; for, after his illness at Bury
St. Edmund’s, as long as he was spared to this life, he was weaker in body
than before ; so that, when moving from place to place, he was from that
time carried in a litter, instead of riding on horseback. He was tried also
by frequent and sharp sicknesses, so that we scarce dared to promise him
life. He however never left off his old way of living, but was always
engaged in godly meditations, or holy exhortations, or other good works.

“ In the third year after King Henry had recalled him from his second
banishment every kind of food by which nature is sustained became loath-
some to him. He used to eat however, putting force upon himself, knowing
that he could not live without food ; and in this way he somehow or another
dragged on life through half a year, gradually sinking day by day in body,
though in vigour of mind he was still the same as he used to be. So, being
strong in spirit, though but very feeble in the flesh, he could not go to his
oratory on foot ; but from his strong desire to attend the consecration of our
Lord’s Body, which he venerated with a special feeling of devotion, he
caused himself to be carried thither every day in a chair. We who attended
on him tried to prevail on him to desist, because it fatigued him so much ;
but we succeeded, and that with difficulty, only four days before he died.

“ From that time he took to his bed ; and, with gasping breath, continued
to exhort all who had the privilege of drawing near him to live to God,
each in his own order. Palm Sunday had dawned, and we, as usual, were
sitting round him: one of us said to him, ‘Lord Father, we are given to
understand that you are going to leave the world for your Lord’s Easter
Court.’ He answered, ‘If His will be so, I shall gladly obey His will.
But if He will rather that I should yet remain among you, at least till I
shall have solved a quesdon which I am turning in my mind, about the
origin of the soul, I should receive it thankfully, for I know not whether
any one will finish it when I am gone. I trust that, if I could take food, I
might yet get well. For I feel no pain anywhere ; only a general sinking,
from weakness of my stomach, which cannot take food. ’

“ On the following Tuesday, towards evening, he was no longer able to
speak intelligibly. Ralph, bishop of Rochester, asked him to bestow his
absolution and blessing on us who were present, and on his other children,
and also on the King and Queen, with their children, and the people of the
land who had kept themselves under God in his obedience. He raised his

246

HIST ORICA L SELECTIONS.

right hand, as if he was suffering nothing, and made the sign of the holy
cross, and then drooped his head and sunk down.

“ The congregation of the brethren were already chanting matins in the j
great church, when one of those who watched about our Father took the 1
book of the Gospels, and read before him the history of the Passion, which I
was to be read that day at the mass. But when he came to our Lord’s !
words, ‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations; j
and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me,
that ye may eat and drink at My table,’ he began to draw his breath more
slowly. We saw that he was just going : so he was removed from his bed,
and laid upon sackcloth and ashes. And thus, the whole family of his \
children being collected round him, he gave up his last breath into the
hands of his Creator, and slept in peace.

“He passed away, as morning was breaking, on the Wednesday before jj
A* D- the day of our Lord’s Supper, the 21st of April, in the year of our Lord’s i
1109 Incarnation 1109, the sixteenth of his pontificate, and seventy-sixth of 1
his life.” 1

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

A.D. I080 — IO93.

(From “ History of Normandy and Englajidf by Sir F. Palgrave.)

1080 The sources of Scottish history are . . . unequally distri-
buted, and comprehend diverse classes. . . .

Eye-witnesses, ear-witnesses, who lived in Malcolm Canmore’s
court, Bishops and Prelates enthroned and installed in the Sane- !
tuaries where Malcolm and his descendants knelt, Writers,
addressing their compositions to Malcolm’s children, furnish
us with the main evidences concerning the era in which the
Scottish Monarchy began to acquire consistency and form,
when her Sovereigns first assumed their position in the Imperial
commonwealth of Western Christendom.

1 Besides labouring unweariedly for the outward improvement and pros-
perity of the Church, Anselm wrote many metaphysical and theological
works, and was indeed the founder or forerunner of the system of theology
afterwards known as Scholasticism ; which, assuming the dogmas of the
Church, sought first to explain, and then to prove, their accordance with
reason.— E. M. S.

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

247

The facts relating to the "earlier periods are deduced from
national chronicles, attested, like the Scripture histories, by the
genealogies they commemorate or include : brief, uncouth,
Celtic, bearing in their barbarous and quaint physiology or
archaic dialect the stamp of authenticity, the annals of
the Monasteries, the poems chanted by the Bard before the
Scottish King : proceeding downwards, the writers apper-
taining to a more cultivated and familiar class, whose very
diversities confirm their general veracity.

Where chroniclers fail, we possess documents in some
respects more authentic than any narrative which Monk or
Canon can afford : deeds and charters whereunto the Scottish
kings and the Scottish nobility and baronage have set their
seals, the muniments by which they hold or grant their regali-
ties, and honours, and lands ; traditions, of which the general
impress is so true as to compensate for the poetical form
assumed by the myth, and correct the fable’s imagery ; lastly,
customs, usages, and practices, vigorous and subsisting until
our own generation, and not to be entirely obliterated until
the last starving Highlanders shall have found a transatlantic
refuge or a transatlantic grave.

England became fully and finally incorporated into one
realm under her new (Norman) dynasty; one King, one
Kingdom, one Church, one Law. Scotland, sometimes called
the sister, but more truly the daughter, kingdom, was created
by and through the recoil of the Norman invasion. Anglo-
Saxon England, expanding into Anglo-Norman England, pre-
served her identity. The Anglo-Saxon language, laws, insti-
tutions, maintain, as they grow, develop, and expand, their
undeviating succession ; but, in Scotland, the neighbouring
realm’s catastrophe displaced and dislocated every primitive
stratum. Yet not merely by one explosion. The new for-
mation resulted from continued and steady English influence,
penetrating, dispersive, metamorphic, which in process of time
produced its full effect, changing and altering the whole frame
of society.

Can any realm be found offering such paradoxes as Scot-
land ? Results apparently so contradictory to their causes ;
all the effects of conquest without a Conqueror. Caledonia,

248 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

unsubdued by foreign enemies, yet vanquished by foreign
influence.1 Scotland, her speech more Anglo-Saxon than
English England. Scotland, more feudal in tenure than feudal
Normandy. Scotland, peopled by the most mixed multitude,
yet in the hour of peril united by the strongest national feeling.
Scotland, the dependent of the Anglo-Norman crown, and
nevertheless protecting the Anglo-Saxon line, and transmitting
that line to England. Scotland, so generous and affectionate
to all, except to Scotia’s sons. Scotland, so justly proud of
her aristocracy, but claiming her proudest ancestry from the
stranger. Whence come Scotland’s noblest names ? —Bruce
and Balliol, Comyn and Gordon, Douglas and Campbell,
Sinclair and Sutherland, Colville and Umphraville, Soulis and
Somerville, Lindesay and Morville, Morley and Fraser, Beaton
and Seaton, Hay and Barclay, Keith and Oliphant, Ker and
Huntley, the patriot Wallace and the royal Stuart — whose
legends give poetry to Scotland’s streams, and dignity to
Scotland’s towers, whose deeds deck her annals, whose cry
resounded in the battle, whose banners led on to victory?
Are we not compelled to deduce their lineages from a British,
a French, a Flemish, a Norsk, a Saxon, or an English fore-
father? from England, or from the invaders, colonists, or
occupants of England ? . . .

The history of mediaeval Scotland ... is really and truly the
most important portion of the history of the living “ Anglo-
Saxon” race. Wherever dispersed, it is in Scotland that the
“ Anglo-Saxons,” or those who call themselves so, will find the
origin of the “ Anglo-Saxon” doctrine, “that a civilized people,
inhabiting any country, has a right to dispossess barbarians of
their land, if residing on it or in their neighbourhood, because
such people do no good to themselves or to others.” Such is
the new Anglo-Saxon version of the angelic message, “ On earth
peace, good will towards men.” All nations and people, races
and tribes, who are incapable of receiving the lessons of Anglo-
Saxon civilization, are to be extinguished before its march, to
melt before its blaze. . . .

1 William Lisle, one of the earliest English students of Anglo-Saxon,
explains that he obtained the key thereto by the study of Bishop Gavin
Douglas’s Virgil. — C. M. Y.

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

249

With respect to the term “ Anglo-Saxon/’ in its modern
political application it is ethnographically incorrect, though
morally true; and this leads us to fix our attention upon the
fact that the insatiable aggressive spirit of “ Anglo-Saxonism”
first became distinctly disclosed amongst the Anglo-Norman
settlers in the territories composing the kingdom of Scot-
land. . . .

We shall therefore consider all who acted under the devour-
ing tendencies which the Anglo-Norman dynasty elicited as
designated by that same term of “ Anglo-Saxon.” All differences
and distinctions of race merge in that general character best
exemplified by the people and states who glory loudest in
claiming it — the Anglo-Saxon republics of the New World.

Such are the mutations and developments constituting the
internal life of Scotland, and rendering her history so im-
portant ; not merely relating to one small kingdom, but
forming a chapter in the annals of mankind. In order, how-
ever, to attain a full perception of the process by which they
were effected, it is needful at the very onset of our inquiries to
dispel the delusion cast by the modern denomination of Scot-
land upon the modern mind ; so inveterate that scarcely can
even the most cautious, accurate, or the best informed student
protect himself against the error. . . .

Take the map before you, perambulate the regions included
in modern Scotland, following the rivers, ascending the moun-
tains, descending into the marshes and plains, and again
consider the chorography of the realm. Sutherland and Caith-
ness in the North are Norwegian. Malcolm’s dominions are
composed of the following territories : — English Lothian, from
the Island-shire of St. Cuthbert to the water of Forth, divided
from the southern parts of Strath Clyde by hill and fell, and by
the waste, which, commencing on the border of Hexham-shire,
had either remained uncultivated or relapsed into primaeval
solitude. Strath Clyde and Galloway, from the Lome to and
beyond the valley of Clyde, until the Mounth, the hills of
ancient Drumalbane. Argyle from the same mountains, but
winding round to Inverness. Moray, highland and lowland,
bounded by the water of Spey; and the residue, the tract
between Forth and Spey, being the territory to which the

250

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

name of Scotia, originally belonging to Ireland, can alone be
assigned. Ireland was the original Scotland.

Nor is it less important that we should advert to the lan-
guages spoken by the families amongst whom these lands of
the Gentile isles were divided : — ' The Lothians, where the
English had oblite%ated the dialects of the preceding occu-
pants ; Strath Clyde, retaining the ancient British tongue ;
lastly, the Irish or Erse, now somewhat affectedly called Gaelic,
a term of recent adoption in all the other portions of the
kingdom to which the comprehensive term of Albanach was
applied. Albanach was the slogan when the Irish Gael rushed
against the Sassenach foe.

And henceforward the social history of the Scottish kingdom
exhibits the gradual extension of the name of Scotland to the
whole of the dominions previously ruled by the Scoto-Pictish
monarchs, and their slow and imperfect consolidation into one
realm, producing successively the subjugation, the expulsion,
and the approaching extinction of the Irish Gael.

Foreign conquest is a great evil ; but the calamity is inferior
to the miseries resulting from a domestic conquest, a domestic
tyranny. Far more susceptible of alleviation is the real stranger’s
harshness, than the incurable antipathy of a legitimate sovereign,
forced and fixed upon his subjects by foreign bayonets or
foreign spears. . . . Traditions of government are more stringent
than laws. The hatred smoulders intensely though the flames
blaze less fiercely ; and the inward grudge rankles after the
enactment is repealed. The “ Penal Laws ” are no longer
upon the Statute Book, but the dominant caste execute them
in spirit, nor can they be erased from that book which will be
opened at the Last Day.

Scotland arose in enmity. Upon the first foundation of the
kingdom the Sovereign became, by reason of his dignity, not
the protector, but the concealed or open foe, of the Crown’s
primitive subjects. This was the unhappy condition in which
Malcolm Canmore was placed from the beginning of his reign.
Shakspeare, so long as the world lasts, will prevent our sympa-
thising with Macbeth ; but we should recollect that Macbeth
had at least as good a legal title to the throne as gracious
Duncan, the son of the Abbot of Dunkeld. Had he succeeded,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

251

Macbeth, generous and free-spirited, would have been the King
of the Gael.

King Malcolm Canmore derived his ancestry from the most
unmixed of the Celts, the Dalriadic stem ; 1 but the babe
Malcolm had nestled in the warm nursing bosom of an English
mother: English was the first language which sounded in
Malcolm’s ear. Whether considered as an historical fact or a
moral lesson, the mother’s influence upon the character of a
child, so clearly indicated in the history of the Kings of Judah
and Israel, is equally exemplified in Scotland. No descendant
of Malcolm ever courted a daughter of the North. In each
succeeding generation, each Scottish Prince, each Scottish
King, sought a consort in the lineages and kindred of England’s
rulers ; and the effect of each mother’s foreign nationality, re-
newed and continued through all the successors of Malcolm
Canmore who possessed the royal authority, is one of the most
important circumstances in Anglo-Scottish history.

Malcolm’s birth may, in one sense, be said to have rendered
him almost an Englishman. His education confirmed his
English character. Deprived of his father’s protection in early
youth, the boy found another parent in his mother’s kinsman,
Northumbrian Siward. During fifteen years Malcolm grew
up into manhood under the Confessor’s benign protection,
his benefactor and his Suzerain, standing before the Confes-
sor’s throne, consorting with the Confessor’s clerks, riding with
the Confessor’s knights, sitting at the Confessor’s tables. Here
he imbibed the cultivation of the English court, and, like
other Englishmen, adopted the Romance of Normandy, the
fashionable dialect. Gammar-Latin he does not seem to have
acquired ; but the English and French, for so we must call
it by anticipation, he spoke as fluently as the Erse or Gaelic,
and was therefore to that extent denationalized. Words are
men’s masters. Malcolm was wise, merciful, and brave, but in
truth a foreigner, brought in by foreign power. The Duan

1 Dalriada seems to have been originally part of Ireland, whence the
Scots came under the command of Angus, Fergus, and Loarn, sons of
King Ere. They settled in the west and north of Caledonia, and after long
wars with the Piets became predominant, and gave their name to the country.
The Dalriads were the descendants of these princes. — C. M. Y.

252

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Albanach greeted him as “ Maolcolium Mac Donnchaidh,” but
at that very moment the Irish Gael shunned their sovereign
as a Sassenach king.

Analysed, all human government gravitates into practical
despotism. ... In the most complete universal-suffrage demo-
cracy the majority, be it only of one, is constitutionally the
master of the minority’s lives and fortunes. Which individual
of the aggregate it is you cannot tell, but there is the one
amongst them who has annihilated the minority, the last feather
breaking the horse’s back, the grain of dust turning the scale. \

A more common despotism is exercised by race over race — I;
none so galling — or by class over class. The “ Monarchy of
the middle classes” is a truth not destroyed by the inaccuracy '
of the expression. Lastly, by a Metropolis, or one territorial por-
tion or member ruling over the rest. It rarely happens that
these Autocracies subsist simply. They are usually combined,
occasioning much perplexity in government. In the British
empire, which includes them all, England is the metropolis.
After the union of the crowns, England was the metropolis of
Scotland.

Lothian, a dismemberment of England, operated upon Scotia
nearly in the same manner as England subsequently affected
Scotland : the more powerful, more vigorous portion, bound to
the weak, and drawing away the elements of influence and
power ; the new piece sewn to the old garment, making the
rent worse ; tearing away the King from his people, the father
from his children. And this metropolitan supremacy acted
concurrently with the prepotence of immigrating races : the
counterpart of Anglo-Saxon ascendancy in Ireland.

Truest Scots by lineage, truest Scots in feeling, Malcolm’s
Irish predecessors cherished their own people, their own land.
Lothian was more opulent and tempting than the straths and
wilds of Albanach ; the Maiden’s Castle, Dunedin, the rock
rising amidst forest and morass, a strong and defensible fortress.
But they loved the soil where their forefathers settled : there
they had a greater strength, loftier rocks, thicker forests, deeper
waters, a speech which cheered them, a kindred to whom they
clung. Not so Anglicized Malcolm, husband of the English
Atheliza, fair and holy Margaret. All in Scotia was strange,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

253

almost unpleasing, to him: his tastes, manners, intellect were
adverse. The Scots he could not leave unwatched ; therefore,
without entirely quitting their borders, he descended to the
very margin of the Forth, the Scottish water. Hence the Peel
of Dumferline became the Royal Tower : here he was placed
close to the English of Lothian, whom he affected ; the North-
umbrians, who recollected in him not the son of the Scottish
Duncan, but the kinsman of their ancient earls ; here also he
was separated from the aggrieved Celts, murmuring their dis-
pleasure. A very forcible expression of feeling is discovered in
the conduct of Donaldbane. Malcolm’s brother kept aloof
from that brother’s dominions, even as he had done when the
dreaded Macbeth had filled the throne. He continued to live
untroubled under Norwegian supremacy in the Western Isles,
saved from the spectacle, to him so odious, of his brother’s
alienation from their blood and race. It is also singularly
characteristic of Malcolm’s reign, that the native chieftains of
the Irish Gael, the Maormors, are entirely obscured until they
reappear as the enemies of his son.

There was, indeed, great reason for discomfort and anxiety.
Domestic happiness caused national tribulation, national sor-
row. As Malcolm grew older, his affection for Margaret in-
creased ; and in proportion to the increase of that affection,
did they estrange themselves more and more from their subjects.
Malcom’s Court became an Anglo-Saxon colony, hostile to
the feelings, the opinions, the laws, the faith, the property, the
national existence of the Gael. Malcolm was generous and
mild ; Margaret kind, sincere, affectionate, pious, truly seeking
to perform her duty, and to assist in promoting the welfare
of the people over whom she ruled ; and yet those endeavours
have produced increasing misery : generation after generation
steeped in anguish, the most powerful impulse given to those
oppressions which seem to place us in the regions of eternal woe.

“ Quivi sospiri, pianti, ed alti guai
Risonavan per l’aer senza stelle,

Perch’io al comminciar’ ne lagrimai.

Diverse lingue, orribili favelle
Parole di dolore, accenti d’ira,

Yoci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle.”

254 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

The successes of the wicked form, comparatively, a small
trial to faith. We are taught to expect their prosperity; but j
it is otherwise with the constant frustration of the holiest
travails and aspirations of the good. . . . But could we view
our actions as Angels view them, would it not be found that
the denial of a blessing to the warfare of the righteous has
oft been the reproof needful for the correction of that
infirmity which makes us lean upon the broken reed, seeking
help from the enemies of Him in whose cause we attempt
to labour ? The very follies, errors, and weaknesses of those
who are most truly His servants are amongst the means
which He has chosen to teach that no flesh shall glory in
His presence.

Margaret’s influence was founded upon love and piety ; her
husband’s counsellor, minister, friend. All that Margaret
disliked, Malcolm disliked ; and all that Margaret loved, he
loved. He would often snatch the Gospel-Book from his
wife’s dear hand, and kiss it out of love for her. Margaret’s
life exhibited a consistent unvaried course of duty, metho-
dical, systematic, never desisting from exertion and self-
sacrifice. Early in the morning nine orphan infants were
brought to the Queen : their food was prepared under her
special care, and attending to these little ones afforded the
chief recreation of her toilsome day. Three hundred poor,
collected from the adjoining districts, were introduced into the
banquet-hall, the meat and drink devoutly carried round to
each by Malcolm and by Margaret; the household priest-
hood the only attendants present for the doors were closed,
not churlishly, but lest the multitude might admire and praise
the royal charity.

Twenty-four alms-folk received their entire support from
Margaret’s bounty, and followed the Court whilst journeying
through the realm. When not employed in the cares of
government, the conduct of her household, and the education
of her children, her time was given to the study of the Holy
Scriptures. Margaret read the Latin language as easily as
her mother-tongue. She delighted particularly in the Psalter,
considered by the mediaeval Church as an epitome of the Old
Testament and the New, reading fifty Psalms each day. Her

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

255

abundant and abounding charity rendered her poorer than the
poor. Privations, penances, hardships, the want of needful
food, and still more of needful rest, enfeebled her constitution.
Prayer marked each vigil of the night and interrupted her
scanty slumbers.

But although Margaret truly lived as one always preparing
to quit the world, her station drew her downwards. Hard con-
flicts had Margaret to sustain between her natural tastes and
the grace by which they were partially subdued. Daughter of a
German mother, her earliest infancy accustomed to the splen-
dour of an imperial court, and afterwards familiarized with the
opulence and luxury of England, Margaret could not help
prizing the world’s dignified elegance. In fleeing from England,
the Atheliza and her guardians had brought with them many
of the treasures of art which adorned the Palace of West-
minster. The goldsmiths’ work of Germany, the Opus Teu-
tonicum so esteemed, and the skilful embroideries of England
were still the delights of her eye, if not of her heart. Mary’s
disgust at the barbarity of Edinburgh, the blooming widow
weeping for the courtly splendour of France, must have been
anticipated by Margaret’s feelings when she landed on the
Scottish shore.

Few of those opinions, institutions, inventions, and delica-
cies constituting the connecting links between civility and
civilization had been communicated to the Scottish realms.
The Irish Gael were still subsisting in a primitive and simple
state of society, not widely differing from the Homeric age,
excepting as affected by climate, local peculiarities, and
Christianity. The’ use of money was scarcely known. Pecu-
niary transactions were really reckoned by heads of cattle.
No one city or town, in the modern sense, was there in
Malcolm’s dominions ; no arts, no artisans, no machinery,
except the plough and the harrow, the file and the forge,
the quern and the distaff.

Margaret sought to enrich the country, and to allure her
subjects to those refinements resulting from Roman civiliza-
tion which had been preserved amongst the other nations
dwelling within the boundaries of the empire. Commerce,
to some extent, had been carried on by the Northmen, who

256

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

conjoined the spirit of mercantile genius with the spirit of j
war. This germ of national wealth was fostered by Margaret’s
industrial patronage. Foreign dealers resorted to the Scottish 1
ports ; and the material products of the country, bartered and
exchanged, enabled Margaret to imitate the style of Southern
realms. Rich stuffs and garments, brilliant, varied, and gay, J
were brought over in plenty, and the Queen, adopting these ;
fashions for herself, her family, and household, induced, or :
compelled — for the wishes of a Sovereign are compulsion —
her subjects to assume this foreign attire.

She trained up a school of embroiderers amongst the
damsels of her court, who worked under her direction and
in her presence, subjected to her strict yet cheerful disci-
pline. The purest silk they wrought with threads of gold,
intermixed with the pearls and gems, for such they were
reckoned, furnished by Scottish streams and Scottish hills.
Stoles and chasubles, altar-cloths and copes, shrines and orna-
ments for the house of God, constituted a main object of these
labours ; and the “ Black Rood,” the most venerated relic
which Scotland owned, that Holy Rood which imparted its
name to the fated palace, was decked with peculiar care.
Nevertheless, the world had an ample share of Margaret’s
favour. She appointed that Malcolm should ride about in
great state and pomp ; no Scottish king had known the like
before. Dumferline was as noble and gaily decked as the
means of Scotia could furnish. Gold and silver vessels and
dishes shone on the royal table ; and Queen Margaret justi-
fied all this to herself by arguing that it was not done out of
ostentation, but as part of her duty to keep up the needful
state and dignity of royalty.

These innovations affronted, nay terrified, the Irish Gael ;
their own pride, no less than their own instinctive acuteness, told
them how much the strength of a nation depends upon small
things. . . . The luxuries introduced by Margaret were as much
against the taste of the Gael as they were conformable to hers j
nor could her inconsistency in this respect do otherwise than
enfeeble the influence of her piety. Had any pallid Culdee,1

1 Probably from Ceol De , servant of God — the clergy of Scotland and
Ireland in early times. Their history is very uncertain. These bishops

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

257

opening the Holy Scriptures, inquired of Margaret how far
her encouragement of artificial wants was consistent with the
precept which tells us to be content with food and raiment,
what answer would the Queen have returned ?

Margaret, an alien amongst the people who had adopted
her, repelled even more by manners, customs, mind, than by
blood, was equally severed from the Scottish Church. She
found no comfort in it. The ministers, the services, were un-
congenial to her, and the real diversities and causes of disunion
were exaggerated by temper and feeling. So inveterate has
been the antipathy nourished by the “ Anglo-Saxon ” against the
Celt, that Catholicity, elsewhere so influential in beating down
the wall of separation between people and people, failed to
produce a kindly bond. . . Many strange customs received the
sanction of the Scoto-Pictish clergy. Generally speaking they
continued very uncombinable with the other members of the
Catholic hierarchy, according to the prevailing system of the
West. Festivals and services did not correspond ; the sooth-
ing charm of Catholicity was partially impaired ; they cele-
brated their mass with “ barbaric rites ” contrary to the general
practice of the Western Church. We interpret this censure
as indicating the liturgical employment of the Erse or verna-
cular tongue. The Paschal computation had ceased to be the
subject of dispute ; nevertheless, Lent was shortened, and not
observed canonically. Even on Easter Day the Holy Commu-
nion was neglected by the clergy, and at all times and seasons
by the laity. Religious discipline had become exceedingly
slack, nor, as we are told, was moral restraint enforced. The
reverence due to the Lord’s Day was forgotten, every servile
work being performed thereon without distinction ; and they
seemed to delight in violating the commandment. . . .

The proper and canonical remedy was obvious : a council
convened under the metropolitan, or the direction of the
Apostolic see. But the Scottish hierarchy . . . were neglected
or forgotten by the Popes, and their Church had failed to

had no fixed diocese, and they were very ignorant and irregular : but some
authors have imagined them to have had a purer faith than the English
Christians of the period, and Sir F. Palgrave seems to be writing on this
assumption. — C. M. Y.

258

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

exert the powers of corporate or collective legislation. . . Vexed
and grieved in spirit, Margaret’s zeal prompted her to irregular
courses calculated to weaken the Church whose errors she
laboured to remove. Unmindful of a clear and positive precept,
she undertook a mission from which woman is excluded, and
sought to become the instrument of reforming the Scottish
Church. A meeting of the Clergy was convened, contrary to all
the rules and principles of ecclesiastical authority. It is doubt-
ful whether any bishops attended ; indeed, . . . there were very
few within the Scottish territories ; but it is certain that there
was no proper president, either by virtue of his office or by
papal delegation.

Margaret stood forth as Opponent, Malcolm by her side ; the
Scottish Clergy as Respondents. She exhorted, reasoned, dis-
puted with the Clergy : they could neither understand her Latin
nor her English ; therefore Malcolm became his wife’s inter-
preter. Notwithstanding this impediment to free converse, the
debate was continued for three days with great vigour and
animation. The Clergy might, nay ought, to have warned the
Queen that her duty was to keep silence.

Priests and Culdees argued stoutly : but Margaret was fami-
liarly acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, Patristic theology,
and the Canons of the Church. After much discussion, the
Clergy in this assembly more than anomalous, singular in the
strictest sense of the term — for we have no other example in
Catholicity of a female presuming to take this forbidden
office — agreed (as it is said) to obey the general usages of the
West Some reformation of manners seems to have been
effected, though probably more by the excellent example of
the royal family than by any exertion of authority.

If there had previously existed a dispathy between Margaret
and the National Church, these discussions put them further
asunder ; Malcolm and Margaret virtually separated themselves
from the Scottish hierarchy. They never afterwards consulted
with the Scottish prelacy or priesthood. . . . The restoration of
the decayed buildings at Iona ; a cross or shrine bestowed
upon Kilrule ; a small donation, the lands of Balchristy,
made to the Culdees of Loch Leven, whose vicinity to Dum-
ferline may have suggested the bounty, appear — unless we

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

259

add a vei y doubtful grant to Murthelach or Aberdeen— the
only recorded tokens of Malcolm’s and Margaret’s affection
towards the ancient Church of Malcolm’s forefathers. This
neglect of the Scottish Church is a conclusive proof of an
alienated spirit : hardly a lamp fed by the piety of King
Malcolm and Queen Margaret ; hardly a priest who could
commemorate Malcolm and Margaret amongst the benefactors
of the altar, or include them in the bidding prayer.

Henceforward Malcolm and Margaret connected themselves
as closely as possible with the English Church. When the
royal family first passed over to Scotland, it does not appear
that they were accompanied by any English churchmen, or at
least none remained. Bishop Aylwin only continued there
for a short season : and, during the discussions with the Scottish
clergy, we cannot collect that the Queen was assisted by any
priesthood of her own. Margaret, therefore, addressed Arch-
bishop Lanfranc, requesting him to become her Christian
father. By this act Margaret, so far as her authority extended,
— and the wife without doubt spoke on behalf of her husband, — -
acknowledged the primacy of Canterbury. In conformity with
this solicitation, Lanfranc despatched to her three of his
brethren, the senior being the English Goldwine or Godwin,
as the foundation of a renovated establishment. His very
remarkable letter, only recently disentombed from a public
library, is the earliest document existing concerning the in-
cipient kingdom of Scotland. ... A further reinforcement fol-
lowed from Durham, the mother-church of the Lothians :
Turgot the Prior — an old dispute with hasty Malcolm forgotten
— became Margaret’s domestic chaplain : and, if we may use
the modern expression, her spiritual director. The good man
admired his royal patrons, the Queen especially, entered into
their confidence, tells us fully of their thoughts, habits, and
customs, and can see nothing wrong in those whom he revered
and loved. Appointed in a subsequent reign to the see of
Kilrule, which by that time had fully acquired its modern
denomination of St. Andrew’s, Turgot preserves to us, in the
biography of his royal mistress and the chronicles of his
Northumbrian cathedral, the memorial so singularly illustrating
this remote and important era.

26o

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

The Culaees constituted the most national portion of the
Scoto-Irish Church. They were the keepers of the Scoto-Irish
ecclesiastical traditions, and their corporate communities main- j
tained the ancient doctrines, customs, and usages. Therefore,
in opposition to these defenders of Celtic nationality, Malcolm
and Margaret founded the Abbey of Durnferline, close to
Dumferline palace and tower, into which they introduced the
venerable and ruling Order of the Latin Church, the Bene-
dictines. Such was the commencement of the new ecclesiastical
settlement, which, proceeding steadily, supplanted the ancient
hierarchy. Margaret and Malcolm did not live to complete
the organization of Dumferline Abbey, but the seed was sown.
Monastic colonies, some from France, but more from England,
spread themselves over the land. “ Sarum Use” supplanted
the Scoto-Irish liturgies. The episcopal sees became located,
and dioceses assigned according to the prevailing system. j
Canonically speaking, the succession of the Scottish prelacy
was unbroken, but not so in a national sense. The mere
Irish Gael were excluded from ecclesiastical privileges and
honours. They were under a perpetual disqualification be-
cause they were Irish. After the reign of Malcolm Canmore
we can scarcely ever discover a Gaelic name in the kingdom’s
hierarchy.

All these anti-national influences were both the cause and
the effect of the Anglo-Saxon colonization, which had been
steadily advancing since Malcolm’s restoration to the Scottish
monarchy, commencing the displacement and extermination of
those whom we may call the aborigines. The troops furnished
by the Confessor, and whose strength placed Malcolm on
the throne, began the blighting Colony. Nevertheless, let
it be constantly recollected, that we must use the term of
“ Anglo-Saxon ” with some degree of inaccuracy. Like the
co-relative denomination, “ Norman,” it fluctuates between the
nomenclature of race and policy. Considering how many of
the French tongue were employed and protected by the Con-
fessor, there can be little doubt but that the Frenchmen
composed a portion of Earl Siward’s army, or followed in
the wake.

Then came the royal fugitives, the Atheling and the Atheliza,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE. 261

and Agatha and Christina, with their companions. To these
were added the English Thanes, who, fleeing from the Norman
yoke, found an asylum in the Scottish territory. Renowned
Gospatric, with his sons Gospatric, Dolphin, and Waltheof,
who were established chiefly in the Merse and the Lothians ;
Archill, the great Northumbrian Thane, to whom Malcolm
granted large territories in Dumbarton, compensating the spo-
liations he had sustained from the Conqueror; Merlesweyn,
Seward- Barn, Alfwin, all of whom can be discerned as landed
men under Malcolm, and whose descendants subsequently
appear high on the roll of Scotland’s territorial aristocracy.
Tradition also designates the families of Lindesay, Yaux,
Ramsey, Lovel, Towers, Preston, Sandiland, Wisheart, Soulis,
Wardlaw, Maxwell, Crichton, Giffard, Maule, and Borthwick,
as established in the Scottish dominions during Malcolm’s
reign.

Lords required vassals ; chieftains a tenantry : equal en-
couragement was given to the immigration of the English
villainage. Every insurrection in Northumbria which unsettled
the inhabitants, drove them within Malcolm’s border : the
desolations of Yorkshire impelled the swarms of cultivators
who escaped William’s conquering sword. Malcolm proceeded
upon a settled principle of policy. The forcible abduction
of the English whom he carried away as prisoners during his
incursions, so that the Scottish villages were filled with them,
was only a rude process of colonization, one of the measures
he employed for raising up a new race to supplant his Irish
Gael

From Malcolm resulted the impulse which transformed the
dominions of the Scoto-Pictish kings into an Anglo-Norman
kingdom. The ideal symmetry of a feudal kingdom has never
been so nearly realized as in Scotland. When each Norman or
Anglo-Saxon colonist solicited, usurped, attained, or won his
domain, he received from the crown the complete usufruct
The theory of tenure imparted, nevertheless, the entire reser-
vation of the superiority to the sovereign, so that the Baron
never could deal with his tenure otherwise than as a gift from
the King. For whereas in other states where military tenures
prevailed, as in Normandy or in England, the tenant might

262

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

alienate his lands, liable to the payment of a fine to the
sovereign, but without the direct intervention of that sovereign,
in Scotland alone no alienation could take place except through
the medium of the superior.

Even at the present day the Scottish vassal holding
immediately under the crown must, in all changes of investi-
ture, obtain his right . . . direct from the crown ; and the gift
and the possession, the charter and the seizin, appear to pro-
ceed from the superior, in the same manner as if the grant
had been gratuitous and original. He kneels before the judges,
who represent the sovereign, and receives investiture by the
staff. This system was irreconcileably hostile to the national
existence of the Irish Gael, for their lands were the property of
the clan, held freely and without subjection, or, in the emphatic
terms of the earliest age, of God and the Sun.

It seems to have been a fatality inseparably attached to
Margaret’s influence, that she could do no good, otherwise than
in connexion with mischief to the Gael. Her utmost endea-
vours were anxiously and consistently employed in training up
her children. They were excellently well instructed : the girls
as good scholars as their mother. Those who might be unable
to judge of the children’s acquirements were pleased and
edified by their gentleness of demeanour, their mutual love and
kindness, their due subordination, — the younger always giving
place to the elder, — their filial obedience. They were thoroughly
imbued with Margaret’s kind and holy spirit, and transmitted
the same spirit to their own children. So long as the male
lineage of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret subsisted, the
Kings and Princes of Scotland were pre-eminent in Christendom
for piety, courtesy, courage, generosity, the acquirements of
the understanding and the graces of the heart — commonplace
terms ; but whatever is most important can only be expressed
with truth in trite phraseology. Household virtues are best
described in household words.

And yet, with all this, there was one irremediable blight
imparted to them by their mother. She brought them up to be
an English family. She taught them from their earliest youth
to despise, fear, and shun the people to whom they belonged,
and over whom they were called to rule. The language of the

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

263

Court and household was English or Norman-French ; the
manners and customs of the Gael rejected as wild or savage ;
and the children encouraged to consider themselves as pre-
eminently distinguished by their Anglo-Saxon descent.

When the Gaelic chieftain crossed the ravine encircling
Dumferline tower, he found himself in a foreign land : strange
customs, strange manners, strange priests, strange courtiers, a
strange Queen, an estranged King ; worst of all, that Queen and
King seeking to perpetuate their estrangement through their
posterity.

Edward, Margaret’s firstborn, renews the recollections of
his father’s patron and his mother’s kinsman, the sainted
Confessor.

Edmund tells you of the valiant Ironside, the hero of the
English, — their Defender.

Ethelred revives the memory of the immediate stem of the
royal family.

Edgar recalls the glories of the Basileus of Britain : he
before whom Kenneth knelt as an hommager ; he whose
triumphant bark was rowed by the vassal Kenneth on the
Dee.

Alexander records the Macedonian hero, whose gesfes, the
earliest of romantic legends, spread throughout the world.

David bespeaks his mother’s veneration for the Prophet,
whose Songs of Sion are daily heard in the Isles of the Gentiles,
the uttermost parts of the earth.

Editha, borne to the baptismal font in the name of the
widowed Anglo-Saxon Queen.

Lastly, the youngest, Mary.

In these appellations, so significant of the sentiments enter-
tained by the parents who bestowed them, imagination and
devotion had their share ; but their main recommendation was
the principle which they involved. In those ages a genealogy
was more than a title-deed, more than a charter : each ancestor
was a living assertor of his descendant’s rights. The recollec-
tion of the English genealogy, and the resumption of the
Anglo-Saxon denominations, amounted to a continued claim of
the Anglo-Saxon dominion; whilst the language declared an
equally continuous rejection of theii ancient Irish nationality.

264

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

When Malcolm and Margaret spoke to their fair sons and
daughters around their board, there was not one child who
answered to a Celtic appellation, whose name reminds you of
Loarn, or Ere of the shining countenance, Aidan of the golden
swords, Ferchar of the arrows, or Aodh, the white-shielded,
Fergus, or Domangard ; not one who would have been known
to the comely hosts of the yellow tresses ; not one whose name
had been heard in the hall, or wailed in the coronach, sung to
the harp, or sounded in the Seanachie’s lay : all were strangers.

Thus did the Irish Gael find themselves enveloped by
inimical influences : their Church rebuked, their manners
despised, their customs contemned, their tastes offended, their
language proscribed, their lands usurped, a fierce race of
strangers implanted amongst them, and, worst of all, the royal
progeny pledged to the perpetuation of implacable enmity.
Awful is the presentiment afflicting individuals and nations,
when they are haunted by the vague foreknowledge of inevi-
table evil : the pestilence which can be anticipated, but not
stayed ; the distant darkness, disclosing the shadow, darker
than the surrounding gloom. Would not the Gael turn wist-
fully to Donaldbane, Malcolm’s brother far in the Hebrides?
Better be a dependent upon the Northmen, a vassal of Magnus
Barefoot1 or Godred Crovan,2 than subjugated by a national
sovereign who is becoming a foreigner amongst his own race,
a usurper in his own realm. . . .

During the first years after the accession of Rufus Malcolm
continued tranquil within his boundaries. A tempting oppor-
tunity was offered by the Odo rebellion,3 which left the northern
districts uncovered and unprotected. Nevertheless, Malcolm
did not move until Rufus, by expelling Edgar from Normandy,
raised a new enemy against himself. The Atheling took refuge
amongst his royal kindred. The former discontents between him

1 Scandinavian King of Dublin, the Isle of Man, and the Hebrides, all of
which were then held by Northmen. He died at Islay either in 1076 or
1096.— C. M. Y.

2 Son of St. Olaf, and King of Norway, first jointly with Harald Har-
drada, then alone. — C. M. Y.

3 The insurrection to set Robert of Normandy on the throne instead of
William, in 1087, in which Odo, bishop of Bayeux, their half-uncle, was
the prime mover.

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

265

and his brother-in-law were forgotten ; and Edgar, retaining all
his affection for Robert, now considered that his allegiance
towards Rufus, who had seized his English possessions, was
dissolved.

The results of Edgar’s presence at Dumferline became
speedily manifest. Malcolm, raising his forces, invaded the
Anglo-Norman realm and the dubious Marchlands. There was
an obvious cause of offence justifying this attack. South
Cumbria had been granted to William de Meschines, a dis-
memberment of the district known, when reduced into Shires,
as Cumberland and Westmoreland, and properly belonging to
the Scoto-Pictish crown. Nor is it improbable but that Malcolm
entertained some project of regaining Margaret’s inheritance,
and ruling as King Consort over the Anglo-Norman realm. In
the van of the mixed host may there not have floated the
imperial banner of Wessex, the banner of Edmund Ironside,
the red dragon w'ith fiery eyes, waving and winding in the air :
that banner which rallied the army of Malcolm’s youngest son
and successor on the disastrous field of Cutton Moor?1

Malcolm designed to overwhelm Northumbrian England.
The enemy whom he would chiefly dread, in the parts adjoining
to his own dominions, was cunning, swarthy, sullen Mowbray.2
Moreover, he might be checked by the garrison placed in the
new Castle upon the Tyne ; that tall, firm, Angevine-fashioned
tower, with its wide circuit of walls, erected during the last
reign by Robert Courthose, as a barrier against the Scottish
incursions. The western districts were less protected. Carlisle
was wasted and abandoned, the Roman ramparts including only
a desolate tract. But Dolphin, Gospatrick’s son, and many of
the Cumbrians or their leaders were still willing to own
Malcolm as their immediate sovereign. . . . His boldness at this
juncture promised success, but the raid passed away like a hurri-
cane. Though Rufus was absent, Flambard and his co-justiciary
were present. Vigilant and active, the regency dispatched an
army against Malcolm, who retreated. No mention is made of

1 Otherwise called the battle of Northallerton or of the . Standard,
fought between David I. of Scotland and the English Barons in 1138* —
C. M. Y.

2 Earl of Northumberland, and owner of 280 English manors. — C. M. Y«

266

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

any battle. Such a repulse, therefore, was not a defeat : far jj
more would the booty carried off by Malcolm and his people I
invite them to repeat the foray, than any chastisement deter
them. Was it not worth the venture, when, for each slain
catheran (and the more slain the better), a score of rother-
beasts 1 might be won ?

It was this intelligence which, reaching Rufus in Normandy,
recalled him to England, for the purpose of punishing Malcolm’s
rebellion. Courthose joined his brother. The Duke knew the
north country well, and Rufus probably anticipated that the
friendship subsisting between him and the Atheling might aid
in a pacification, should any contingency make it expedient to
bring the war to an amicable conclusion.

Courthose lent his cordial aid, sharing in the command of
the army. There was a double object in this expedition; not
merely to repel or punish an enemy, but to enforce the service
denied by the vassal. Rufus collected all the forces which
populous and powerful England could furnish. England’s j
fleets sailed up the North Sea, whilst the army advanced under
the command of the King, the Duke of Normandy, and the
Anglo-Norman chieftains. But the expedition was ill-timed.
Whether delayed by those obstacles against which no foresight
can guard, or impelled by his impetuous temper, Rufus began
the campaign at the season of the declining year when the
elements were sure to war against him. His vessels were
dispersed, wrecked, sunk by the equinoctial gales ; the troops
starved on the bleak and barren land, and the desolation
which the Conqueror had inflicted upon Northumbria aided in
bringing calamity upon his son.

Malcolm advanced out of Scotia into the Lothians, still
colloquially reckoned as England. The people were English,
and their language English, therefore the political separation
was often forgotten ; just as the German included Elsatz in the
notion of Deutschland long after the fertile Rhinebank had
been ceded to the French crown. The peasantry of Alsace
retain the same notion still.

Unexpectedly Rufus and Malcolm came in sight of each
other. The entire ignorance under which generals and armies
1 A provincial term for horned cattle. — C. M. Y0

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

267

laboured concerning the movements and operations of their
enemies constitutes a peculiar feature of military operations
during the Anglo-Norman era. The Conqueror had been a
great commander, but his talent expired with himself; and,
generally speaking, we may say that the mediaeval nations had
at this period lost the discipline of civilized war, without
acquiring the sagacity of the savage. Though harassed and
reduced, the forces of Rufus were formidable to Malcolm ; but
at the same time the situation of the King in this remote and
inhospitable region was not without peril. Before him the
Forth; the Scottish hosts hovering on his flank; around him
famine; in the rear, an insurgent country and the suspected
Mowbray. Each monarch had sufficient reasons to forbear;
and the precautions which Rufus had taken for the purpose of
procuring an amicable settlement succeeded. Malcolm was
not actuated by any determined or implacable hostility; he
hesitated to repudiate the homage claimed by the Anglo-
Norman crown.

Robert, with the assent of Rufus, passed over to the Scottish
camp, where, meeting Edgar Atheling, these friends acted as
mediators. Peace was concluded on fair terms, and with no
inconsiderable degree of diplomatic skill. Each party obtained
substantial advantage, sufficiently enabling him to claim the
stipulations as to the result of success. Far and wide might
Englishman and Norman spread the news, how Malcolm
Canmore, humbled by the very aspect of the Anglo-Norman
army, abandoning his pretensions of independence, agreed to
obey Rufus, even as he obeyed the Conqueror, King William,
before him. On these conditions had he obtained peace, ea
conditione ut Willielmo , sicutpatri suo obedivit , Malcolmus obediret .
True, but not the whole truth. Thus might the English and
Normans exult, and the court and courtiers of Rufus triumph.
But how might the treaty be construed in the North ? When
Malcolm’s clerks and courtiers returned to Dumferline, they
would lay no peculiar emphasis upon the submission portion
of the transaction ; they would not talk much about it ; and,
discreetly shading the homage, they on their part would also
rejoice at the glorious conclusion of the warfare, whereby
Malcolm Canmore, king of Scots, prince of Strath Clyde and

268

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Cumbria, and lord of Lothian, Queen Margaret’s husband, had
won the restitution of all his rights, the satisfaction for all his
claims.

Some particulars are told by the monks of Durham, of Peter-
borough, of Worcester, and St. Evroul ; but we collect them
more distinctly in Westminster Abbey, close at home. Enter ?
the arched chamber, the treasury where the Confessor kept his;
hoard, on the eastern side of the cloisters, between the Chapter- ;
house portal and the refectory. Here are the muniments of
the kingdom, arranged and catalogued by Walter Stapleton,
bishop of Exeter, who as Lord Treasurer had them whilome in
his charge. Ask for the keys of the huge iron-bound oaken
hutch, and, opening the three locks, take out the charter which!
Malcolm’s grandson, the second Alexander, obtained from ;
Coeur de Lion’s Chancery (we believe that Edward Longshanks
brought it back again), and in this faded document you will |
read the privileges which his grandsire had enjoyed.

Twelve marks of good red gold, paid and told every year to
Malcolm from the English treasury. Twelve broad manors
restored, to be held of the Crown of England, where Malcolm
and his followers may, when he journeyed to the south, revel
and rest, roast the beef on the skewer, and broach the bright
ale. One hundred shillings for every day from and after
Malcolm or his successors shall have passed his own confines,
pursuant to the King’s writ or summons, in journeying towards
the King’s Court, and as much for his journey homeward until
he shall have re-entered his own land. Thirty shillings in
sterling silver, twelve wastel-cakes, twelve simnels, four quarts
of wine, and forty wax candles, all of the same kind as the
royal household use, two pounds of pepper, four pounds of
cinnamon, and two stone of wax, quality not specified, all duly
paid, measured, and weighed to Malcolm day by day, and each
and every day from his arrival at Court until his departure,
whilst he, the King of Scots, as a liegeman, shall be in actual
attendance on the King of England.

Moreover to the King of Scots was allowed the honour
sought but denied to the Cymric princes. He bore the sword
before the King ; and parliamentary traditions commemorated,
even to our own age, the memorials of the suit and service

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE. 26 9

rendered by the premier liegeman of the empire to the Anglo-
Norman crown.

“ What is the meaning of this seat ?” said a member of the
House of Commons, whose words we faithfully record, to the
old Usher of the Black Rod, pointing to an arm-chair placed
beside the throne. “ It is for the King of Scots,” was the
answer ; the custom having been transmitted by continual
usage, from time whereof the memory of man knew not to the
contrary. The chair of the Scottish king continued in the
ancient position until the fastidious fancy of the Regent
Sovereign displaced and destroyed the signal illustration of
our constitutional history.

As friends the Kings seemed to part ; Rufus marched home-
wards. The description of his route, as given by the chroni-
clers, from “ Northumbria,” through “ Mercia,”* into “ Wessex,”
discloses a fact possessing greater historical importance than
belongs to the mere line of march. The expressions employed
show forcibly how the constitutional geography of the Anglo-
Saxons was preserved. The Anglo-Norman king chose to be
accompanied by his ducal brother and the Atheling Edgar.
Their presence testified the restoration of harmony ; the un-
grateful stipulations which banished the English prince from
England and from Normandy were virtually rescinded. We
possess evidence also that Edgar Atheling ultimately obtained
restitution of his lands, where he found a retreat, and closed
his lengthened life in peace and quietness.

The reconciliation between Rufus and Robert had proved
honourable and advantageous to both ; but the transient
illusion of concord between the false brothers was immediately
dissipated : they could not live except in enmity. Rufus
refused to perform the stipulations into which he had entered
with Robert, the price of the Duke’s useful service. At Yule-
tide Rufus held his court and wore his crown as usual, that
great constitutional ceremony never neglected till the acces-
sion of the Plantagenet dynasty. Robert and Edgar were
invited to grace and honour the festivities. They attend^,
but the joy of the solemn season was marred and destroyed
by the fraternal outburst. The reiterated angry demands of
Robert brought on as angry a refusal from Rufus, and, two

270

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

days before Christmas, on the feast of St. Clement, Robert, |
taking the Atheling with him, rushed away in great despite,'!
and returned to Normandy, renewing the scarcely-suspended
dissensions and quarrels. j

Although it cannot be asserted that Robert and the
Atheling were in any wise guarantees of the treaty of peace
between Rufus and Malcolm, yet their friendship would have
contributed to good understanding. Affairs again became
uneasy in the North. Malcolm’s conduct began to excite
suspicions of his hostility towards Rufus, or furnished a
pretence for aggression. In the following year, therefore,;
Rufus made another bold and threatening movement, showing
much statesmanship. Lugubalia, or Carlisle, though amidst
the British population, had always been excluded from the1
grants of Cumbria and Strath Clyde, the apanages of the
Scoto-Pictish monarchy. The city, together with the circuit j
or liberty of fifteen miles round about, was erected into an I
English sheriffdom or bailiwick. Placed under the protection
of St. Cuthbert, the district was annexed to Bernicia or <
Northumbria, a portion of the kingdom or the earldom, an
enclavure in Cumbria. Utterly desolated by the Danes,
Carlisle continued wasted and abandoned; the few inhabitants j
of the adjoining country avoided the precinct as though a
dread had come upon them. No attempt was made to
occupy the tract either for habitation or culture. More than !
two centuries had now elapsed since sword and fire laid the
city low. Great oak-trees grew up amidst the ruined Roman
walls. Eden’s waters flowed idly. Neglected, as insignificant
or worthless, Carlisle had been forgotten by the Anglo-Norman
councils. Dolphin, son of the great Gospatric, had. . . .
occupied the place with his followers. The district became
a Scottish outpost, menacing South Cumbria, claimed by
Malcolm as his rightful dominion, still wrongly withheld.

Rufus marched thither at the head of a large army, and ex-
pelling Dolphin restored the city. Employing portions of the
Roman structures as a nucleus, he raised the castle, rebuilt the
towers. The seat of Arthur’s fabled chivalry was garrisoned by
the Norman soldiery; and here they might first become ac-
quainted with those wondrous fictions which have constituted

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

271

the most powerful element in the inspiration of poetry. Here in
the rude North, and amidst the rugged moors, were the proto-
types of the Round Table and the Joyeuse Garde, the ultimate
sources of Tasso’s Epic and Ariosto’s Lay.

The Conqueror slew, and slaughtered, and dispersed, but he
never attempted to transplant masses of men. Rufus executed
a bolder stroke of policy than had been ventured upon by his
father.

“ Let Uther Pendragon do what he can,

Eden will run where Eden ran,”

is the old Cumberland adage ; but a new race became settled
upon Eden’s pleasant borders. Rufus brought together a large
population from the south, English churls, their wives and
their children, whom he settled on the deserted though not un-
grateful soil. It is to the expansion of this colony of hostile
blood and race that we may attribute the ultimate extinction
of the Cymri : so thoroughly expunged from the Cumbrian
region, that no trace can be found of them except a tradition
or a name. Helvellyn sounds to us as their dying moan.

This is a perplexed period in the history of Scotland and
the Scottish border. Malcolm was sustaining great vexations
and anxieties, such as threatened his kingdom. Independent
Anglo-Norman adventurers would be even more formidable
than the Norman king. . . .

All around, nigh or distant, constituted as fine a field for
Anglo-Norman enterprise as the territory of the uncivilized
Spaniard to the “American Anglo-Saxon.” The earldom of
Richmond, held by Alan the Red, gave the Breton a position
within a few days’ march of the Lothian frontier. So troubled
was Malcolm, so unable, as he feared, to protect even his own
family from the Norman power, that he and Margaret, the
father and the mother, were compelled to send young Editha
to her aunt Christina, now Abbess of Romsey in England ;
the minster might protect the damsel whom the castle-walls
could not defend. Christina, rigid and stern, did not, like
Margaret, adorn her piety by kindness : she determined that
Editha should take the veil ; she would dress the girl in the
^arb of a novice, and scold at her because she refused to pro-
nounce the vows. Editha, as she herself tells us, for we have

272

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS,

her authentic legal deposition of the facts, dreaded her aunt’s pre-
sence ; but she had a will of her own also. Out of her aunt’s !
sight, she would take the veil off her head, and stamp on it;
and when she was brought back to Dumferline, wearing the
same attire, Malcolm Canmore used also to snatch off the ugly
thing, and say he would rather see her Earl Alan’s wife than
locked up in a monastery.

Troubles arose again in the relations between the Anglo-
Norman monarch and the Scot. There are difficulties in
making out which of the two was the complaining party ; none
as to the party acknowledged to be the superior. Malcolm
may have deemed the occupation of Carlisle an act of hostility,
and he is represented as a suitor for peace. Furthermore, he
petitioned that the stipulations which Rufus entered into with
him should be fully performed. Rufus, on his part, having
some grief against Malcolm, some charge which it was needful
for the latter to answer, summoned the Scottish monarch to
appear at Gloucester, before the Court, on St. Bartholomew’s ,
Day. Malcolm prepared to obey the mandate ; but we may
doubt whether Rufus permitted him to journey from manor to
manor, receiving the allowance and enjoying the good cheer.
Durham claimed Malcolm’s spiritual allegiance, William de St.
Carileph being his diocesan ; and it was during this journey
that he assisted in the solemn ceremony of the Minster’s foun-
dation, laying the first and corner stone.

Malcolm reached Gloucester when Rufus had recovered
from that dangerous illness, so strangely conducive to Anselm’s
appointment. Health returned imparted cheerfulness. Rough
and boisterous mirth might also accompany returning strength :
but the same unconquerable violence of temper which brought
on the first attack continued to range within him. Rufus was
maddening with pride. Malcolm approached the royal residence.
The rude usher closed the chamber door. Rufus would neither
see Malcolm nor speak to him. He would not admit the King
of Scots into his presence, insisting that Malcolm, the delin-
quent, was bound to submit to the judgment of the Court
before which he was called. Explanations ensued. Malcolm,
without denying the supremacy of the British crown, main-
tained that, according to the old law, if summoned to answer,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

273

he was only amenable to the judgment of the Court assembled
on the Marches, where the kings of the Scots were accustomed
to do right to the kings of England — ubi reges Scottorum
erant solid facer e recdtudinem regibus Anglorum ; fulfilling the
judgment given by the nobles of either realm. A vestige of
this jurisprudence may be found in the long-continued
border custom, when the knights of England and Scotland
assembled, with cautious step and wary glance, to admi-
nister justice between the hostile neighbours who dwelt on
either side, in the debateable land. More complete is the
similarity in the case of the Conqueror himself, who, if he
rendered obedience to the Capet, was to meet the French
sovereign beneath the ancient tree on the confines of the
Duchy and the Kingdom.

Seize your enemy now that he is in your power was the
advice given to Rufus by his counsellors. But Rufus refused
to violate the protection which the lawful summons to his
Court afforded, and Malcolm returned to his dominions in
safety. The peace was, however, at an end : Malcolm deter-
mined to renew hostilities. A raid might obtain the satisfac-
tion which Rufus denied.

The expedition was planned with more than usual caution.
Malcolm associated his eldest son, Edward, in the command,
though his mother almost forbade him to go. Edgar also
joined the host. To the care of Edgar Atheling Malcolm
entrusted Margaret and the other children, Ethelred, Edmund,
Alexander, David, Editha, Mary. As a further precaution,
they were removed from Dumferline tower to the Castle of
Maidens, Edinburgh, the rock whose height, surrounded by
the lochs below, offered greater security than Dumferline,
should any mischance arise. The English population of
Lothian was more congenial and loyal to the English
Margaret and the English Edgar than the Celtic tribes.
Penances and austerities, privations and self-sacrifices, taught
by faith, submitted to in faith, vigils and fastings, had de?
stroyed Margaret’s health; she was now wasting away. Broken*
by infirmity, racked by constant pain, she could only travel in
a litter, rarely rise from her couch very sad was Margaret’s
parting from husband and son.

274

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

For the fifth time Malcolm harried England with fire and
flame : he overspread the country, ravaged and plundered
Teesdale, Cleveland, and Richmondshire ; then directing his
course homeward, invested Alnwick Castle, taking his station
on the north. The season was exceedingly stormy : deluges
of rain swelled the streams and broke up the ground. Fear-
less Malcolm and his men crossed the river Alne by the ford
which still bears his name. It was a bold enterprise of
Malcolm’s to attempt reducing such a fortress, new in its
strength, and defended by the Earl Mowbray, and his favourite ^
Morel ; Mowbray the stubborn and stern, who answered not
if you spake to him, who made no return if you saluted him,
upon whose sullen countenance a smile was never seen, i'
Mowbray always troubled, full of guiles and wiles, and whose
cunning inspired as much apprehension as his ferocity.

Within the Castle of Alnwick, the warder, passing from
Hotspur’s Chair, conducts you down a steep and gloomy flight
of steps, opening into a small, concealed, but protected postern ;
hence, as he informs you, sallied forth the warrior Hamond,
by whom Malcolm was slain. The legend is somewhat old,
and may be traced as early, at least, as Hotspur’s time. . . .

“ When the fierce Scots besieged the Castle, the stout valiant
soldier stole out, determined to brave every danger. Hamond
simulated himself as an herald of peace : the garrison, straitened
by Malcolm’s besieging army, as he told the sentinels, had
resolved to implore the King’s clemency. He was sent forth
to proffer the Castle’s keys, pendant on the sharp point of his
lance. Malcolm, unsuspicious and unarmed, received the
messenger at his tent’s door ; when Hamond suddenly trans-
fixed the King in the eye ; by his speedy flight into the woods
he escaped the vengeance of the Scottish soldiery, and the
surname Pierce-eye , or Percy, acquired by the act, was trans-
mitted to his noble posterity.” Such were the traditions of
the age, when the pleasant fictions of chivalry, — that chivalry
whose ideal period recedes when you advance in search of it,
•like the vase of the rainbow, — began to be incorporated by
herald and pursuivant, with the information derived from
pedigree, chronicle, and charter.

Authentic histoiy agrees with these fables in the main fact,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE.

275

that Malcolm’s death, on the festival of St. Brice, a festival
still recognised in our calendar, was effected through a stratagem
which conscience repudiates, though the laws of war absolve
the perpetrator. Morel, so intimately connected with Malcolm,
by a bond then deemed no less strong than the ties of con-
sanguinity, seduced or betrayed his “ gossip ” into an ambush,
where Mowbray’s forces surrounded him ; but it was by Morel’s
own hand that the King was slain. The deed was committed
upon a rising ground, on the northern banks of the Alne,
opposite the Castle ; whose image reflected in the stream may
oft be seen, intersected, yet not concealed, by the shadows
which the towers cast.

The locality is indicated with singular precision. Malcolm’s
Cross still marks the spot where Malcolm fell. Other memo-
rials there were, but Malcolm’s Well is obliterated : subterra-
neous workings, disturbing the adjoining strata, have drawn
off the waters, and time and violence have ruined the chapel
of St. Leonard, founded by the piety of Eustace de Vescy,
who, married to a Margaret of the royal family of Scotland,
endowed the sanctuary for the repose of Malcolm’s soul.

A general attack upon the Scottish forces ensued. Mow-
bray’s forces pursued them, and afforded to the Northumbrian
earl a glorious victory. Very many of the Scots were drowned
in the overflowing rivers, or clemmed in the quagmires, or suf-
focated in the marshes, or slaughtered in the rout. Some took
refuge in the woods which covered the country up to the
Scottish border. Prince Edward, the King’s eldest son, who
received a mortal wound in the conflict, was carried oif from
the field of battle to the forest which bounded the Redesdale,
where he died. The name of Edward's Ley , given to the
glade, commemorated his fate : his body was deposited by
the side of his father’s in Tynemouth Priory ; but both the
corpses were subsequently translated to the royal sepulchres
at Dumferline.

Margaret continued languishing in dreary Dunedin, dis-
tressed, heavy-hearted, unable to rise from her bed, a widening
chasm of time separating her from those most dear. No
messenger from Northumbria reached her. No intelligence
from the host. Nothing known how Malcolm had sped;

T 2

276

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

nothing about Edward, from whom she had parted so reluc*
tantly ; nothing about Edgar.

The rough coarse weather, the raging floods which destroyed
the tracks, might in some degree account for the delayed
intelligence. Yet these circumstances, adding to the perils of
the expedition, would also increase solicitude. Each gloomy, j
brief November day was lengthened by anxiety : night brought
no comfort. Sinking rapidly under bodily infirmity and fore-
boding dread, speaking as if certain that her children would
soon be deprived of all parental care, she earnestly bespught
her confessor and chaplain, Turgot, to guide them for good.
Margaret still clung to life. Nothing but lingering love kept
her affections in the world : she became feebler and feebler :
having received the Holy Communion, her face turned more
ashy pale, and the bystanders knew that death was near.
Edgar entered the chamber. He was silent. Margaret’s
anxious inquiries, Where was Malcolm? Where Edward?
received one answer. It was well with them, was the reply.
No more earthly hope, no more fear. Margaret’s yearning
earnestness, nevertheless, extorted the details of the calamity.
She heard, burst into an ejaculation of praise and thanksgiving,
and expired.

Whilst the mourners were watching and wailing, and the
tapers burning round the tranquil corpse, their flickering
flames contending with the murky air, Dunedin was suddenly
surrounded by the hostile forces of the Gael. Malcolm’s
death had been the signal for a general insurrection. Morel
and Mowbray had set them free : they reverted to their
national rights, they proclaimed their natural sovereign,
natural by blood and lawful by right, the brother of the de-
ceased monarch, one who would own them as his people. It
must be recollected that, as yet, the law of direct and lineal
representation had not been established amongst the Scots.
The function of deciding upon the succession depended upon
those seven chieftains whom later constitutional language
termed the Seven Earls of Scotland. They were the authori-
ties empowered to bestow the sovereignty upon that individual
to whom the crown of Fergus1 properly belonged.

1 Reckoned as the first of the kings of the Scots. — C. M. Y,

MARGARET AND MALCOLM CANMORE .

277

Donaldbane was proclaimed. With lightning swiftness the
fiery cross reached the Western Isles. The Norwegians im-
mediately gave their support to the future King of the Scots.
It is asserted that he purchased the alliance by making a formal
concession of the Ebudes1 to Magnus. The sturdy Northman
was already master of the islands ; but he gladly gave his aid.
The fleet was always ready ; the crews eager for conflict ; the
battle-axes hanging on the wall. The Scandinavian and Celtic
warriors united; and,- from the rapidity of their progress, it
should seem as if Donaldbane had been expecting the opportu-
nity. Donaldbane is accused of inimical intentions against his
brother's family. Hence the investment of the castle during
that mourning time, when the inmates were protected by the
sanctity of sorrow. The dense fogs which enveloped the rock
suggested or afforded the means of escape. Two of Malcolm’s
sons refused to abandon their country and their people.
Edmund passed over to his father’s brother, Donaldbane,
hailed and accepted as King. Ethelred returned (as we con-
jecture) to his Abbey of Dunkeld, and disappears from history.
The other children gathered round their maternal uncle, the
Atheling Edgar; and, protected and guided by him, they all
reached England in safety. . . .

The children of Malcolm and Margaret were all ultimately
adopted, so to speak, by Anglo-Norman England. The
Princesses were, in the first instance, placed considerately and
kindly under their aunt Christina at Romsey. Edith resumed
the monastic garb. It was generally supposed that she had
taken the vows ; or that, if not actually professed, she was
equally bound in conscience. People seemed determined to
believe that during her infancy she had been offered by her
parents to the service of the altar. This supposition was
entirely unfounded, and was afterwards disproved by canonical
process and legal evidence : nevertheless, it is probable that
her aunt the abbess insisted upon the supposition as though
it were true. Edith was very beautiful. She inherited her
mother’s talent, her mother’s warm affection, sweetness,
patience, piety, and profited by all the cultivation, both intel-
lectual and moral, that Margaret had bestowed. Therefore,
1 The Hebrides.

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

278

notwithstanding her supposed profession, suitors presented jj
themselves, courting the poor damsel of high degree. William
de Warenne, earl of Surrey, sought her hand. The Earl made
his application to Rufus : Edith, if considered as a royal ward, !
could not be espoused without the royal assent. Another ;;
suitor offered, a pleasant and attractive lover, Henry Beauclerc,
who at all times in his life

“ En nobles dames et en belles,

Et en corteises damiselles,

Tourna son deduit et s’entente.”

Edith was sufficiently attractive to warrant the assumption ;'
that Henry loved her, according to his sort of love. . . .

But her monastic seclusion, or some other obstacle, opposed
his views, and no further did the courtship proceed till a more j
fortunate or unfortunate day, when, under the name of Matilda, f
she espoused the Anglo-Norman king.1

THE CRUSADES.

( From “ History of Latin Christianity by Dean MlLMAN.)

The sanctity of the Holy Land, the scene of the Saviour’s life
and death, untraceable in the first records of the religion, had
grown up, — as the faith became the mistress of the whole inward
nature of man, of the imagination as well as the moral senti-
ment,— into almost a part of the general, if undefined, creed.

... It might seem an inevitable consequence of the Incarna-
tion of the Godhead in human nature, that man should lean,
as it were, more strongly on this kindred and comprehensible
Saviour, than on the same Saviour when retired into his
remoter Divinity. Everything which approximated the human
Saviour to the heart and understanding was cherished with
deep reverence. Even in the coldest and most unimaginative
times the traveller to the Holy Land seems to enjoy a privilege
enviable to the Christian, who, considering its natural effects on
1 Abridged from chap. vii. vol. iv.

THE CRUSADES.

279

the religious emotions, will not venture to disdain the blameless
at least, if not beneficial, excitement. The objective reality
which arises from the actual places where the Saviour was born,
lived, rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, works back
upon the inward or subjective faith in the heart of the believer.
Where the presence, the being, of the Redeemer is more
intensely felt, there it is thought to dwell with greater power.

The Holy Land was very early visited by Christian pilgrims.
The supposed discovery of the Sacred Sepulchre, with all the
miraculous legends of the Emperor’s vision, the disinterment
of the true Cross, the magnificent church built over the
Sepulchre by the devout Helena and her son Constantine,
were but the consequences and manifestations of a pre-existent
and dominant enthusiasm. This high example immeasurably
strengthened and fed the growing passion.

It is remarkable, however, to find among those who yielded
in other respects to the more materializing influences of the
dominant Christianity some who attempted to maintain on this
point a lofty spirituality. Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, even
Jerome, remonstrated against the dangerous and unnecessary
journey to such remote lands, dangerous to the virtue especially
of the female sex, unnecessary to him who might worship God
with equal fervour in every region. Others of the Fathers
during the fourth century strongly opposed the more sublime
tenet of the Divine Omnipresence to the sanctity of peculiar
places, the superiority of a quiet holy life in any part of the
world to the wandering over sea and land, to east or west,
to seek more intimate assurance of the Divine presence. . . .

During the following centuries pilgrimage became the ruling
passion of the more devout. The lives of saints teem with
accounts of their pious journeys. Itineraries were drawn up,
by which pilgrims might direct their way from the banks of the
Rhine to Jerusalem. It was a work of pious munificence to
build and endow hospitals along the roads for the reception of
pilgrims. These pilgrims were taken under the protection of
the law ; they were exempt from toll, and commended by kings
to the hospitality of their subjects. Charlemagne ordered that
through his whole realm they were to be supplied at least with
lodging, fire, and water. In some religious houses the statutes

28o

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

provided for their entertainment. In Jerusalem there were
public caravansaries for their reception. Gregory the Great
sent money to Jerusalem to build a splendid hospital. The
pilgrim set forth amid the blessings and prayers of his kindred
or community, with the simple accoutrements which announced
his design — the staff, the wallet, and the scallop-shell ; he
returned a privileged, in some sense a sanctified, being.
Pilgrimage expiated all sin. The bathing in the Jordan was,
as it were, a second baptism, and washed away all the evil of
the former life. The shirt which he had worn when he entered
the Holy City was carefully laid by as his winding-sheet, and
possessed, it was supposed, the power of transporting him to
heaven. . . . The privilege of beholding Jerusalem and the
sacred places was not the only advantage of the pilgrim.
There was the great emporium of reliques ; and the pilgrim
returned bearing with him a splinter of the true Cross, or some
other memorial of the Saviour, of the Virgin Mother, the
Apostles, or some earlier saint. The prodigal demand did not
in the least drain the inexhaustible supply. These reliques bore
a high price in the West. At a later period commercial specu-
lation in less sacred goods mingled with the devout aspirations
after the Ploly Land ; and the silks, jewels, spices, paper, and
other products of the East were brought home from Palestine
by the pious but not unworldly merchants of Venice, Pisa,
Marseilles, and even of France and Germany.

Down to the conquest of Jerusalem by Chosroes1 the Per-
sian, the tide of pilgrimage flowed uninterrupted to the Holy
Land. The victory of Heraclius and the recovery of the
true Cross from the hands of the fire-worshippers re-estab-
lished the peaceful communication ; and throughout this whole
period the pilgrims had only to encounter the ordinary
accidents, privations, and perils of a long journey. . . . Nor
did the capture of the city by the Mahommedans at first
break off this connexion between Christendom and the birth-

1 Khoosroo, or Chosroes, one of the Sassamid kings of Persia, who took
the city in 614. Chosroes was a Magian, or, in modern language, a Parsee or
fire-worshipper. The city was then recovered by the Greek Emperor, Hera-
clius : and the Mahommedan conquest was by the Caliph Omar, in 637.—
C. M. Y.

THE CRUSADES.

281

and burial-place of the Redeemer. To the Mahommedans
Jerusalem was no indifferent possession; it was sacred, if in a
less degree than Mecca. It had been visited by their Prophet
once, according to their legend, in a mysterious and super-
natural manner. The Prophet had wavered between Jerusalem
and Mecca as the Kebla of prayer for his disciples. The
great religious ancestor of the Jews was also that of the Arabs :
the holy men and prophets of Israel were held in honour by
the new faith; the Koran admitted the supreme sanctity,
though not the Divinity, of Jesus. On the surrender of Jeru-
salem to the Caliph Omar, Christianity was allowed to perform
all its rites, though shorn of their pomp and publicity.1 Their
bells might no longer peal over the city ; their processions were
forbidden ; they were to allow without resistance the conversion
of Christians to Islamism ; to keep themselves distinct by name,
dress, and language ; to pay tribute ; and to acknowledge the
sovereign power of the Caliph. They were constrained to
behold the Mosque of Omar usurp the site of the ancient
Temple of Jerusalem. Yet pilgrimage was not as the worship
of images to those stern iconoclasts. It was a part of religion
so common with their own belief, that they were rather disposed
to respect than to despise this mark of attachment in the Chris-
tians to their own Prophet. The pious, therefore, soon began
to flock again in undiminished numbers to Mahommedan as to
Christian Jerusalem.

In the plan of his great Christian Empire Charlemagne
threw the shadow of his protection over the Christians in the
remotest parts of the world. Not merely did he assist the
churches in Syria with large alms, he entered into treaties for
their protection with the Mahommedan rulers. In his amicable
intercourse with Haroun A1 Raschid, the courteous Caliph
bestowed on him no gift more precious than the keys of the
Holy Sepulchre. At the great millennial period, the close of
the tenth and the commencement of the eleventh century, the
strong religious movement which arose from the expectation of
the Lord’s coming to judgment wrought with no less intensity
on the pilgrimages to the Holy Land, than on the other religious
services. Men crowded to Jerusalem as to the scene of the
1 They might not speak Arabic, the holy language.

282

HIS T ORICA L SELECTIONS.

Lord’s revelation in glory, to be witnesses of the great assize in
the Valley of Jehoshaphat. They were eager not merely to visit,
but, if their death anticipated the last day, to die in the Holy
Land. . . .

Throughout the earlier half of the eleventh century men of
all ranks — princes like Robert of Normandy, lordly bishops
like those of Germany — headed pilgrimages. Humble monks,
and even peasants, found their way to the Holy Land, and
returned to awaken the spirit of religious adventure by the
account of their difficulties and perils ; the passionate enthu-
siasm by the wonders of the Holy Land.

Now, however, the splendid, polished, and more tolerant
Mahommedanism of the earlier Caliphs had sunk before the
savage yet no less warlike Turks. This race of the Mongol
stock had embraced all that was enterprising, barbarous, and
aggressive, rejecting all that was humane, or tending to a higher
civilization, in Mahommedanism. They were more fanatic
Islamites than the followers of the Prophet, than the Prophet
himself. The Seljukians1 became masters of Jerusalem: and
from that time the Christians of Palestine, from tributary sub-
jects, become despised slaves ; the pilgrims, from respected
guests, intruders whose hateful presence polluted the atmos-
phere of pure Islamism. . . . Year after year came back the few
survivors of a long train of pilgrims, no longer radiant with
pious pride at the accomplishment of their holy purpose, rich
in precious reliques, or even the more costly treasures of the
East ; but stealing home, famished, wounded, mutilated, with
lamentable tales of their own sufferings and of those who had
died of the ill usage of the barbarous unbelievers.

At length the afflictions of the Christians found a voice
which woke indignant Europe, an apostle who could rouse
warlike Latin Christendom to encounter with equal fanaticism
this new outburst of the fanaticism of Islam. This was the
mission of the hermit Peter.

Latin Christendom was already in some degree prepared

1 Seljuk was a Turk or Tartar chief, who being banished from Turkistan
by his khan, settled in Bokhara and embraced the Mahommedan religion.
His sons, Togrul Beg and Taafer Beg, led the further advance of the tribe ;
and in 1077 Jerusalem fell into their hands. — C. M. Y.

THE CRUSADES.

283

for this great confederacy. A league of the whole Christian
world against the Mahommedans had expanded before Gerbert,
Silvester II. . . . It was among the bold visions which had
floated before the imagination of Gregory VII. . . . Hildebrand's
more immediate object, however, was not the recovery of
the Holy Land, but the defence of the Greek empire, which
was now threatened by the advance of the irresistible Selju-
kians into Asia Minor. . . . But the deliverance of the decrepit,
unrespected, and often hostile empire of the East would have
awakened no powerful movement in Latin Christendom : the
fall of Constantinople would have startled too late the tardy
fears and sympathies of the West. . . . The ambassadors of
Alexius Comnenus 1 at Piacenza were received with decent
respect but with no passionate impulse. The letters from the
East, imploring aid, had no power to hush and suspend the
hostilities which distracted the West. If not heard with in-
difference, they left but superficial and evanescent impressions
on the minds even of those who had most reason to dread the
progress of the Mahommedan arms.

For the conquest of the Holy Land a zealous Pope might
alone, in favourable times, have raised a great Christian army ;
he might have enlisted numbers of warlike and adventurous
nobles, even sovereigns, in the cause. But humbler and more
active instruments were wanting for a popular and general
insurrection in favour of the oppressed and afflicted pilgrims,
for the restoration of the Holy Land to the dominion of the
Cross. All great convulsions of society are from below.

Peter the Hermit is supposed, but only supposed, to have been
of gentle birth. He was of ignoble stature, but with quick and
flashing eye ; his spare, sharp person seemed instinct with the
fire which worked within his restless soul He was a Frank (of
Amiens in Picardy), and therefore spoke most familiarly the
language of that people ever ready for adventurous warfare,
especially warfare in the cause of religion. Peter had ex-
hausted, without satisfying the cravings of his religious zeal, all
the ordinary excitements, the studies, the austerities and mor-
tifications, the fasts and prayers of a devout life. Still yearning
for more powerful emotions, he had retired into the solitude of
1 Greek emperor of Constantinople from 1081 to 1118. — C. M. Y.

284

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

the strictest and severest cloister. There his undoubting faith
beheld, in the visions of his disturbed and enthralled imagina-
tion, revelations from Heaven. In those days such a man could
not but undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, more
especially in times when martyrdom might be his reward. The
deeper his feelings at visiting the holy places, the more strong
would be his sorrow and indignation at their desecration by
their rude and cruel masters. Peter saw with a bleeding heart
the sufferings and degradation of his brethren ; his blood turned
to fire ; the martial Frank was not extinct within him. In an
interview with Simeon,1 the persecuted patriarch, he ventured to
rebuke his despondency. When Simeon deplored the hopeless
weakness of the Byzantine empire, the natural lords and pro-
tectors of the Christians in Syria, Peter fearlessly promised him
the succour of Western Christendom. His vow seemed to
obtain the ratification of God. Prostrate in the Temple, he
heard, as it were, the voice of the Lord Himself : “ Rise, Peter,
go forth to make known the tribulations of My people ; the
hour is come for the delivery of My servants, for the recovery
of the holy places ! ”

a. d. Peter fully believed in his own mission, and was therefore

1094 believed by others. He landed in Italy, he hastened to Rome.
The Pope, Urban, was kindled by his fervour, acknowledged
him as a prophet, and gave full sanction to his announcement
of the immediate deliverance of Jerusalem.

The Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, with inde-
fatigable restlessness went from province to province, from
city to city. His appearance commanded attention, his
austerity respect, his language instantaneous and vehement
sympathy. He rode on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his
head and feet bare ; his dress was a long robe, girt with a
cord, and a hermit’s cloak of the coarsest stuff. He preached
in the pulpits, in the roads, in the market-places. His elo-
quence was that which stirs the heart of the people, for it came
from his own, brief, figurative, full of bold apostrophes ; it
was mingled with his own tears, with his own groans ; he beat
his breast : the contagion spread throughout his audience. His

1 Greek patriarch of Jerusalem who suffered from the oppression of the
Seljuks. — C. M. Y.

THE CRUSADES.

285

preaching appealed to every passion ; to valour and shame, to
indignation and pity, to the pride of the warrior, the com-
passion of the man, the religion of the Christian, to the love
of the Brethren, to the hatred of the Unbeliever, aggravated
by his insulting tyranny, to reverence for the Redeemer and
the Saints, to the desire of expiating sin, to the hope of Eternal
Life. Sometimes he found persons who, like himself, had
visited the Holy Land; he brought them forth before the
people, and made them bear witness to what they had seen or
what they had suffered. He appealed to them as having
beheld Christian blood poured out wantonly as water, the
foulest indignities perpetrated on the sacred places in Jerusa-
lem. He invoked the Holy Angels, the Saints in heaven,
the Mother of God, the Lord Himself, to bear witness to his
truth. He called on the holy places, on Sion, on Calvary, on
the Holy ’Sepulchre, to lift up their voices and implore their
deliverance from sacrilegious profanation ; he held up the
crucifix, as if Christ Himself was imploring their succour.

His influence was extraordinary, even beyond the immediate
object of his mission. Old enemies came to be reconciled;
the worldiest to forswear the world ; prelates to entreat the
Hermit’s intercession. Gifts showered upon him : he gave
them all to the poor, or as dowries for loose women, whom he
provided with husbands. His wonders were repeated from
mouth to mouth; all ages, both sexes, crowded to touch his
garments ; the very hairs which dropped from his mule were
caught and treasured as reliques.

Western Christendom, particularly France, was thus pre-
pared for the outburst of militant religion. Nothing was
wanting but a plan, leaders, and organization. Such was the
state of things when Pope Urban presented himself to the
Council of Clermont, in Auvergne.

Where^all the motives which stir the mind and heart, the
most impulsive passion and the profoundest policy, conspire
together, it is impossible to discover which has the dominant
influence in guiding to a certain course of action. Urban,
no doubt, with his strong religiousness of character, was not
superior to the enthusiasm of his times ; to him the Crusade
was the cause of God. This is manifest from the earnest sim-

286

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

plicity of his memorable speech in the council. No one not
fully possessed by the frenzy could have communicated it.
At the same time, no event (to this his discerning mind could
not be blind) could be more favourable or more opportune for
the advancement of the great papal object of ambition, the
acknowledged supremacy over Latin Christendom, or for the j
elevation of Urban himself over the rival Pope and the temporal ;
sovereigns his enemies. . . . The author of the Crusades was too ;
holy a person, too manifest a vicegerent of Christ Himself, for
men either to question his title or circumscribe his authority.

Never, perhaps, did a single speech of man work such extra-
ordinary and lasting results as that of Urban II. at the Council
of Clermont. Urban, as a native of France, spoke, no doubt,
the language of the country : his speech has survived only in
the colder and more stately ecclesiastical Latin, and probably
has preserved but few of those pathetic and harrowing details
of the cruelty, the licentiousness, the sacrilege of the Turks, :
which told most effectually on his shuddering and maddening j
audience. He dwelt on the sanctity, on the wonders of the
land of promise ; the land chosen of God, to whom all the i
earth belonged as His own inheritance ; the land of which the •:
history had been recorded both in the Old and New Testa- ;
mant ; of this land the foul infidels were now the lords : of the
Holy City itself, hallowed by the life and death of the Saviour.
Whose soul melted not within ? whose bowels were not stirred
with shame and sorrow ? The Holy Temple had become not j
only a den of thieves, but the dwelling-place of devils. The :
churches, even that of the Holy Sepulchre itself, had become
stalls for cattle, and Christian men were massacred . . . within the
holy precincts. The heavenly fire had ceased to descend ; the
Lord would not visit His defiled sanctuary. While Christians
were shedding Christian blood, they were sinfully abandoning
this sacred field for their valour, and yielding up their brethren
in Christ to the yoke, to the sword of the Unbeliever; they
were warring on each other, when they ought to be soldiers of
Christ. He assured them that the Saviour Himself, the God of
armies, would be their leader and their guide in battle. There
was no passion which he left unstirred. “ The wealth of your
enemies shall be yours ; ye shall plunder their treasures. Ye

THE CRUSADES.

287

serve a Commander who will not permit His soldiers to want
bread, or a just reward for their services. He offered absolu-
tion for all sins (there was no crime — murder, adultery, robbery,
arson — which might not be redeemed by this act of obedience
to God), absolution without penance to all who would take up
arms in this sacred cause. It was better to fall in battle than
not to march to the aid of the Brethren : he promised Eternal
Life to all who should suffer the glorious calamity of death in
the Holy Land, or even in the way to it. The Crusader passed
at once into Paradise. For himself, he must remain aloof ;
but, like a second Moses, while they were slaughtering the
Amalekites, he would be perpetually engaged in fervent and
prevailing prayer for their success.

The Pontiff could scarcely conclude his speech ; he was in-
terrupted by ill-suppressed murmurs of grief and indignation.
At its close one loud and simultaneous cry broke forth, It is
the Will of God ! it is the Will of God ! All ranks, all classes,
were seized with the contagious passion ; the assembly declared
itself the army of God. Not content with his immediate
success, the Pope enjoined on all the bishops to preach in-
stantly, unremittingly, in every diocese, the imperative duty of
taking up arms to redeem the Holy Sepulchre. The epidemic
madness spread with a rapidity inconceivable except from the
knowledge how fully the mind and heart of man were prepared
to imbibe the infection. France, including both its Frank
and Norman population, took the lead ; Germany, of colder
temperament, and distracted by its own civil contentions — the
Imperialist faction from hatred of the Pope — moved more
tardily and reluctantly ; in Italy it was chiefly the adventurous
Normans who crowded to the war ; in England the Normans
were too much occupied in securing their vast possessions, the
Anglo-Saxon population too much depressed, to send large
numbers of soldiers. All Europe, however, including the
Northern nations, except Spain, occupied with her own crusade
in her own realm, sent their contingent either to the wild
multitudes who swarmed forth under Walter the Pennyless, or
the more regular army under Godfrey of Boulogne. The
Crusade was no national war of Italy, France, or Germany
against the Egyptian empire of the Fatimites, or the Seljukian

288

HIS T ORICA L SELECTIONS.

A. D.

1099

Sultan of Iconium : it was a war of Christendom against
Mahommedanism. No government hired the soldiers, unless
so far as the feudal chief summoned his vassals to accompany
him ; nor provided transports and the artillery and implements
of war, or organized a commissariat, or nominated to the
chief command. Each was a volunteer, and brought his own
horse, arms, accoutrements, provisions. In the first disastrous
expeditions, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless,
the leaders were designated by popular acclamation or by bold
and confident self-election. The general deference and respect
for his admirable character and qualifications invested Godfrey
of Boulogne in the command of the first regular army. It
was fortunate, perhaps, that none of the great sovereigns of
Europe joined the first Crusade. The Emperor and the King
of France were under excommunication ; Conrad, king of
Italy,1 too necessary to the Pope to be spared from Italy ; in
William Rufus was wanting the great impulse, religious faith.
The ill success of the later Crusades undertaken by Emperors
and Kings, their frequent want of ability for supreme com-
mand when alone, their jealousies when allied, show that a
league of princes of the second rank, though not without their
intrigues and separate interests, was better suited by this kind
of expedition. . . .

Urban II. lived to hear hardly more than the disasters and
miseries of his own work. His faith had the severe trial of
receiving the sad intelligence of the total destruction of the
myriads who marched into Hungary and perished on the way,
by what was unjustly considered the cruelty of the Hungarians
and treachery of the Greeks ; hardly one of these ever reached
the borders of the Holy Land. His depression may have been
allayed by the successes of the army under Godfrey of Bou-
logne : he heard of the capture of Antioch, but died before
the tidings of the capture of Jerusalem, on the 15th of July,
1099, could reach Rome.

The Crusades, if we would calculate the incalculable

1 Conrad was the son of the Emperor Henry IV. He rebelled against
his father, and was crowned King of Italy, this being one of the titles
centred in the Emperors of the West. Urban supported his cause. —
E. M. S.

THE CRUSADES.

289

waste of human life from first to last (a waste without achieving
any enduring result), and all the human misery which is implied
in that loss of life, may seem the most wonderful frenzy which
ever possessed mankind. But from a less ideal point of view
— a view of human affairs as they have actually evolved under
the laws or guidance of Divine Providence, considerations
suggest themselves which mitigate or altogether avert this
contemptuous or condemnatory sentence.

. . . The Crusades consummated, and the Christian Church
solemnly blessed and ratified, the unnatural, it might be, but
perhaps necessary and inevitable union between Christianity
and the Teutonic military spirit. What but Christian warlike
fanaticism could cope with the warlike Mahommedan fanati-
cism which had now revived by the invasion of the Turks, a
race more rude and habitually predatory and conquering than
the Arabs of the Prophet, and apparently more incapable of
yielding to those genial influences of civilization which had
gradually softened down the Caliphs of Damascus, Bagdad,
Cairo, and Cordova to splendid and peaceful monarchs ? Few
minds were, perhaps, far-seeing enough to contemplate the
Crusades, as they have been viewed by modern history, as a
blow struck at the heart of the Mahommedan power, as a
politic diversion of the tide of war from the frontiers of the
European kingdoms to Asia. Yet neither can this removal of
the war to a more remote battle-field, nor the establishment
of the principle that all Christian powers were natural allies
against Mahommedan powers (though this principle, at a later
period, gave way before European animosities and enmities),
have been without important influence on the course of human
i affairs. . . .

. . . But the effects of these expeditions to the Holy Land
may further be considered under four heads.

I. — The first and more immediate result of the Crusades was
directly the opposite to that which had been promised, and no
doubt expected, by the advisers of these expeditions.

The security of the Eastern Christian empire, and its conse-
quent closer alliance with Latin Christendom, though not the
primary, was at least a secondary object. . . . But instead of the
| reconciliation of the Byzantine empire with the West, the

200

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Crusade led to a more total estrangement ; instead of blending
the Churches into one, the hostility became more strong and
obstinate.

The Emperors of the East found their friends not less
dangerous and destructive than their enemies could have
been. Vast hordes of disorderly and undisciplined fanatics
came swarming across the frontiers, trampling down everything
in their way, and spreading desolation through the more peace-
ful and flourishing provinces. Already the Hungarians had
taken up arms against these unwelcome strangers, and a
Christian power had been the first to encounter the champions
of the Cross. The leaders of the Crusade, the Hermit himself,
and a soldier of fortune, Walter, who went by the name of
Pennyless, were altogether without authority, and had taken
no steps to organize or to provide food for this immense
population which they had set in motion. This army consisted
mainly of the poorer classes, whose arms, such as they were,
were their only possession. The more enthusiastic, no doubt,
vaguely trusted to the protection of Providence ; God would
not allow the soldiers of His Blessed Son to perish with want.
The more thoughtful calculated on the hospitality of their
Christian brethren. The pilgrims of old had found hospitals
and caravansaries established for their reception ; they had
been fed by the inexhaustible bounty of the devout. But it had
occurred to none that, however friendly, the inhabitants of
Hungary and the provinces of the Byzantine empire through
which they passed could not, without miracles, feed the
swelling and, it seemed, never-ending swarm of strangers.
Hunger led to plunder, plunder to hostility, hostility hardened
and inflamed to the most bitter mutual antipathy. Europe
rang with denunciations of the inhospitality, the barbarity,
of these more than unbelievers, who were accused of secret
intelligence and confederacy with the Mahommedans against
the cause of Christ. The subtle policy of Alexius Com-
nenus, whose craft was in some degree successful in the en-
deavour to rid his subjects of this intolerable burthen, was
branded as the most malignant treachery. Hence mistrust,
hatred, contempt sprang up between the Greek and Latin
Christians, which centuries cculd hardly have eradicated, even

THE CRUSADES.

291

if they had been centuries of friendly intercourse rather than
of aggravated wrong and unmingling hostility. The Greeks
despised the Franks as rude and savage robbers ; the Franks
disdained the Greeks as wily and supple slaves.

The conduct of the more regular army, which took another
and less destructive course, was restrained by some discipline,
and maintained at first some courtesy, yet widened rather than
closed this irreparable breach. The Emperor of the East found
that his Western allies conquered not for him but for them-
selves. Instead of considering Syria and Palestine as parts
of the Eastern empire, they created their own independent
principalities, and owned no sovereignty in him who claimed
to be the legitimate lord of those territories. There was a
singular sort of feudal title made out to Palestine. God was the
Sovereign owner. Through the Virgin, — of royal descent from
the house of David, — it descended to our Lord. At a later
period the contempt of the Franks reached its height in their
conquest of Constantinople, and the establishment of a Latin
dynasty on the throne of the Eastern emperors ; contempt
which was. amply repaid by the hatred of the Greeks, who,
when they recovered the empire, were only driven by hard
necessity to cultivate any friendly alliance with the West.

. . .II. — The Pope, the clergy, the monastic institutions,
derived a vast accession of power, influence, and wealth from
the Crusades. Already Urban, by placing himself at the
head of the great movement, had enshrined himself in the
general reverence ; and to the Pope reverence was power and
riches.

. . . He bequeathed this great legacy of pre-eminence to his
successors. The Pope was general-in-chief of the armies of
the faith. He assumed from the commencement, and main-
tained to the end, of the Crusades an enormous dispensing
authority, to which no one ventured or was disposed to raise
any objection ; not a dispensing authority only from the penal-
ties of sin in this world or the next, a mitigation of the pains of
purgatory, or a remittal of those acts of penance which the
Church commuted at her will ; the taking the Cross absolved,
by his authority, from all temporal, civil, and social obligation.
It substituted a new and permanent principle of obedience for

u 2

292

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

feudal subordination. The Pope became the liege lord of
mankind.

. . . The prince who took the Cross left his dominions under
the protection of the Holy See ; but as the more ambitious,
rapacious, and irreligious of the neighbouring sovereigns were
those who remained behind, this security was extremely pre-
carious. But the noble became really exempt from most feudal
claims ; he could not be summoned to the banner of his lord :
even the bonds of the villein, the serf, and the slave were
broken or enfeebled ; they were free if they could extricate
themselves from a power which, in the eye of the Church, as
interfering with the discharge of a higher duty, was lawless, to
follow the Cross. Even the creditor could not arrest the debtor.
The crusader was the soldier of the Church, and this was his
first allegiance, which released him from all other.

. . . The hold on the human mind which directly or indi-
rectly accrued to the Pope in Europe from this right of levying
war throughout Christendom against the Unbeliever, of sum-
moning, or at least enlisting, all mankind under the banner of •
the Cross, could not but increase in its growth as long as the
crusading frenzy maintained its power.

To take the Cross was the high price which might obtain
absolution for the most enormous offence ; and, therefore, if
the Pope so willed, he would be satisfied with nothing less, j
There were few sovereigns so cautious, or so superior to the
dominant superstition, as not, in some period of enthusiasm >
or disaster, of ambition or affliction, either from the worldly ;
desire of propitiating the favour of the Pope, or under the ,
pangs of wounded conscience, to entangle themselves with
this irrevocable vow; that vow, at least, which could only be
annulled by the Pope, who was in general little disposed to
relax his hold on his self-fettered subject. The inexorable
taskmaster, to whom the king or prince had sold himself in
the hour of need, either demanded the immediate service, or
held the mandate in terror over his head to keep him under
subjection. It will appear, hereafter, how the most dangerous
antagonist of the papal power, the Emperor Frederick II., was ;
trammelled in this inextricable bondage, from which he could
not release himself even by fulfilling its conditions.

THE CRUSADES.

293

The legatine authority of the Pope expanded to a great
extent in consequence of the Crusades. Before this period
an ecclesiastic, usually of high rank or fame, had been occa-
sionally commissioned by the Pope to preside in local councils,
to determine controversies, to investigate causes, to negociate
with sovereigns. As acting in the Pope’s person, he assumed
or exercised. the right of superseding all ordinary jurisdiction, —
that of the bishops, and even of the metropolitans. The Crusades
gave an opportunity of sending legates into every country in
Latin Christendom, in order to preach and to recruit for the
Crusades, to urge the laity who did not take up the Cross in
person to contribute to the expenses of the war, to authorize
or to exact the subsidies of the clergy. The public mind
became more and more habituated to the presence, as it were,
of the Pope, by his representative, to the superseding of all
authority in his name.

Not only the secular clergy, but the monasteries, were
bound to assign part of their revenues for the conquest of the
Holy Land ; . . . but . . . the vast increase in their wealth and
territorial possessions more than compensated for this, at first,
light taxation. There may have been few, but doubtless there
were some, of all ranks up to princedoms, who, in their reck-
less enthusiasm, stripped themselves of all their goods, aban-
doned their lands and possessions, and reserved nothing but
their sword, their horse, and a trifling sum for their mainte-
nance, determined to seek either new possessions or a glorious
and saintly grave in the Holy Land. But all were suddenly
called upon for a large expenditure, to meet which they had
made no provision. The private adventurer had to purchase
his arms, his Milan or Damascus steel, his means of transport
and provision ; the nobles and the princes, in proportion to
their rank and territory, to raise, arm, and maintain their
vassals. Multitudes were thus compelled to pledge or to
alienate their property. Here and there prudent nobles, or
even kings, might watch this favourable opening, when estates
were thrown so prodigally and abundantly on the market.
So William Rufus bought his elder brother’s dukedom of
Normandy.

But there was one wealthy body alone which was not deeply

294

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

embarked in these costly undertakings — the Church. The
bishops who took up the Cross might possibly burthen, they
could not alienate, their estates. On the other hand, the
clergy and the monasteries were everywhere on the spot to
avail themselves of the embarrassments and difficulties of their
neighbours. Godfrey of Boulogne alienated part of his estates
to the Bishop of Verdun; he pledged another part to the
Bishop of Liege. For at least two centuries this traffic went
silently on, the Church always receiving, rarely alienating.
Whoever, during the whole period of the Crusades, sought to
whom he might entrust his lands as guardian, or in per-
petuity, if he should find his grave or richer possessions in the
Holy Land, turned to the Church, by whose prayers he might
win success, by whose masses the sin which clung to the soul
even of the soldier of the Cross might be purged away. If he
returned, he returned often a disappointed and melancholy
man, took refuge from his despondent religious feelings in the
cloister, and made over his remaining rights to his brethren.
If he returned no more, the Church was in possession. . . . Thus
in every way the all-absorbing Church was still gathering in
wealth, encircling new lands within her hallowed pale, the one
steady merchant who in this vast traffic and sale of personal
and of landed property never made a losing venture, but went
on accumulating and still accumulating, and for the most part
withdrawing the largest portion of the land in every kingdom
into a separate estate, which claimed exemption from all bur-
thens of the realm, until the realm was compelled to take
measures, violent often, and iniquitous in the mode, but still
inevitable. The Church which had thus peaceably despoiled
the world was in her turn unscrupulously despoiled.

III.— The Crusades established in the Christian mind the
justice and the piety of religious wars. . . .

The first Crusades might be in some degree vindicated as
defensive. In the long and implacable contest the Mahom-
medan had, no doubt, been the aggressor : Islam first declared
general and irreconcileable war against all hostile forms of
belief ; the propagation of faith in the Koran was the avowed
aim of its conquests. . . .

Neither the secure possession of their vast Asiatic dominions

THE CRUSADES.

295

of Egypt, Africa, and Spain, nor their great defeat by Charles
Martel, quelled their aggressive ambition. They were con-
stantly renewing hostilities in every accessible part of the East
and West, threatening, or still further driving in, the frontier of
the Byzantine empire, covering the Mediterranean with their
fleets, subduing Sicily, and making dangerous inroads and
settlements in Italy. New nations or tribes from the remoter
East, with all the warlike propensities of the Arabs, but with
the fresh and impetuous valour of young proselytes to the
Koran, were constantly pouring forth from the steppes of
Tartary, the mountain glens of the Caucasus or the' Himalaya,
and infusing new life into Mahommedanism. The Turks had
fully embraced its doctrines of war to all of hostile faith in
their fiercest intolerance ; they might seem imperiously to
demand a general confederacy of Christendom against this
declared enemy. Even the oppressions of their Christian
brethren, oppressions avowedly made more cruel on account
of their religion, within the dominions of the Mahommedans,
might perhaps justify an armed interference. The indignities
and persecutions to which the pilgrims, who had been respected
up to this period, were exposed, the wanton and insulting
desecration of the holy places, were a kind of declaration of
war against everything Christian. But it is more easy in theory
than in fact, to draw the line between wars for the defence
and for the propagation of the faith. Religious war is too
impetuous and eager not to become a fanaticism. From this
period it was an inveterate, almost uncontested, tenet, that wars
for religion were not merely justifiable, but holy and Christian,
and if holy and Christian, glorious above all other wars. The
unbeliever was the natural enemy of Christ, and of His Church ;
if not to be converted, to be punished for the crime of unbelief,

to be massacred, exterminated by the righteous sword

IV. — A fourth result of the Crusades, if in its origin less com-
pletely so, and more transitory and unreal, yet in its remote
influence felt and actually living in the social manners of our
own time, was Chivalry ; or at least the religious tone which
Chivalry assumed in all its acts, language, and ceremonial. The
Crusades swept away, as it were, the last impediment to the
wedlock of religion with the warlike propensities of the age

296

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

All the noble sentiments which blended together are Chivalry
— the high sense of honour, the disdain or passion for danger,
the love of adventure, compassion for the weak or the
oppressed, generosity, self-sacrifice, self-devotion for others —
found in the Crusades their animating principle, perpetual
occasion for their amplest exercise, their perfection and con-
summation. How could the noble Christian knight endure the
insults to his Saviour and to his God, the galling shame that
the place of his Redeemer’s birth and death should be trampled
by the scoffer, the denier of his Divinity ? Where were adven-
tures to be sought so stirring as in the distant, gorgeous,
mysterious East, the land of fabled wealth, the birthplace of
wisdom, of all the religions of the world ; a land only to be
approached by that which was then thought a long and perilous
voyage along the Mediterranean Sea, or by land through king-
doms inhabited by unknown nations and people of strange
languages ; through Constantinople, the traditions of whose
wealth and magnificence prevailed throughout the West ? For
whom was the lofty mind to feel compassion, if not for the
down-trodden victim of Pagan mockery and oppression, his
brother-worshipper of the Cross, who for that worship was
suffering cruel persecution ? To what uses could wealth be so
fitly or lavishly devoted as to the rescue of Christ’s Sepulchre
from the Infidel ? To what more splendid martyrdom could
the valiant man aspire than to death in the fields which Christ
had watered with Elis own blood ? What sacrifice could be too
great? Not even the absolute abnegation of home, kindred,
the proud castle, the host of retainers, the sumptuous fare, for
the tent on the desert, the scanty subsistence, it might be
(though this they would disdain to contemplate) the dungeon,
the bondage in remote Syria.

Lastly, and above all, where would be found braver or more
worthy antagonists than among the Knights of the Crescent, the
invaders, — too often, it could not be denied, the conquerors, —
of the Christian world ? Hence it was that France and Spain
were pre-eminently the crusading kingdoms of Europe, and,
as it were, the birthplace of Chivalry : Spain as waging her
unintermitting crusade against the Saracens of Granada and
Cordova ; France, as furnishing by far the most numerous, and

THE CRUSADES

297

it may be said, with the Normans, the most distinguished,
leaders of the Crusades, from Godfrey of Boulogne down to
St. Louis ; so that the name of Frank and of Christian became
almost equivalent in the East.

This singular union, this absolute fusion of the religion of
peace with barbarous warfare, this elevation of the Christian
knighthood, as it were, into a secondary hierarchy (even before
the establishment of the military orders), had already in some
degree begun before the Crusades. The ceremonial of invest-
ing the young noble warrior in his arms may be traced back to
the German forests. The Church, which interfered in every
human act, would hardly stand aloof from this important rite.
She might well delude herself with the fond trust that she was
not transgressing her proper bounds. The Church might seem
to enter into this closer if incongruous alliance with the de-
liberate design of enslaving war to her own beneficial purposes.
She had sometimes gone further ; proclaimed a Truce of God,
and war, at least private war, had ceased at her bidding.1 The
clerk, the pilgrim, the merchant, husbandman, pursued his
work without fear ; women were all secure ; all ecclesiastical
property, all mills, were under special protection.

But in such an age it could but be a truce, a brief, tempo-
rary, uncertain truce. By hallowing war, the Church might
seem to divert it from its wanton and iniquitous destructiveness
to better purposes, unattainable by her own gentle and per-
suasive influences, to confine it to objects of justice, even of
righteousness ; at all events, to soften and humanize the usages
of war, which she saw to be inevitable. If, then, before the
Crusades the Church had thus aspired to lay her spell upon
war, to enlist it, if not in the actual service of religion, in that
of humanity, defence of the oppressed, the widow, the orphan,
the persecuted or spoliated peasantry, how much more so when

1 The Truce of God in southern France proclaimed four days in the week,
from Wednesday noon to Monday noon, as holy, from, respect to the insti-
tution of the Eucharist, the Passion, and Resurrection of the Lord. How
far was this, as well as the Truce of God proclaimed by the Popes, actually
observed? It is to be feared that the Church, when Popes became more
warlike, abrogated or allowed the Truce to fall into desuetude. History
hardly records its observance.

2g8

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

war itself had become religious ! The initiation, the solemn
dedication to arms, now the hereditary right, almost the indis-j f
pensable duty, of all high-born men, of princes or nobles|j
(except where they had a special vocation to the Church or the;
cloister), became more and more formally and distinctly a
religious ceremony. The noviciate of the knight was borrowed,
with strange but unperceived incongruity, from that of the
monk or priest. Both were soldiers of Christ, under a different
form and in a different sense.

It was a proud day in the castle (as it was in the cloister:
when some distinguished votary took the cowl) when the young
heir assumed his arms. The vassals of all orders met around
their liege lord : they paid, perhaps on this joyous occasion
alone, their willing and ungrudged fees ; they enjoyed the splen-
dour of the spectacle ; feasted, if at lower tables, in the same
hall ; witnessed the jousts or military exercises, the gayer sports,
the tricks of the jougleurs, and heard the romance of the Trou-
veurs. But the clergy were not absent ; the early and more
impressive solemnity was theirs. The novice, after bathing,
bound himself by a vow of chastity (not always too rigidly ob-
served), to shed his blood for the faith, to have the thought of
death ever present to his mind. He fasted till the evening,
passed the night in prayer in the Church or Castle Chapel. At
the dawn of morn he confessed ; as the evening before he had
purified his body by the bath, so now his soul by the absolu-
tion ; he heard mass, he partook of the Holy Eucharist. He
knelt before his godfather in this war-baptism. He was publicly
sworn to maintain the right, to be loyal to all true knighthood,
to protect the poor from oppression. He must forswear all
treason, all injustice. Where woman needed his aid he must
be ever prompt and valiant ; to protect her virtue was the first
duty and privilege of a true knight. He must fast every Friday,
give alms according to his means, keep faith with all the world,
especially his brethren in arms, succour, love, honour all loyal
knights. When he had taken his oath, knights and ladies ar-
rayed him in his armour : each piece had its symbolic meaning,
its moral lesson. His godfather then struck him with a gentle
blow, and laid his sword three times on his neck— “ In the
name of God, St. Michael (or St. George, or some other tutelar

THE CRUSADES.

299

saint), and (ever) of our Lady, we dub thee knight.” The
church bells pealed out; the church rang with acclamations;
the knight mounted his horse, and rode round the lists or
over the green meadows, amid the shouts of the rejoicing
j multitude.

j But what young knight, thus dedicated, could doubt that the
conquest of the Holy Land was among his primary duties, his
j: noblest privileges ? Every knight was a soldier of the Cross ;
every soldier of the Cross almost enlisted for this great object,
j . . . The Infidel, as much as the giant or dragon of romance,
was the natural foe of the Christian. Every oppressed Chris-
tian,— and every Christian in the Holy Land was oppressed, —
the object of his sworn protection. Slaying Saracens took
rank with fastings, penitential discipline, visits to shrines, even
\ alms-givings, as meritorious of the Divine mercy. So by the
| Crusades chivalry became more religious, religion more chival-
j rous ; for it was now no unusual, no startling sight, as the
j knight had become in one sense part of the hierarchy, to behold
bishops and priests serving, fighting as knights. In a holy war,
the bishop and the abbot stood side by side with the prince or
the noble ; struck as lusty blows; if they conquered, disdained
not the fame ; if they fell, supposed that they had as good a
right to the honour of martyrdom.

Even the most incongruous and discordant part of chivalry,

! the devotion to the female sex, took a religious tone. There
| was one Lady of whom, high above all and beyond all, every
knight was the special servant. It has been remarked that in
j the French language the Saviour and His Virgin Mother are
'worshipped under feudal titles (Notre Seigneur, Notre Dame).
If the adoration of the Virgin, the culminating point of chivah
;rous devotion to the female sex, is at times leavened with
! phrases too nearly allied with human passion, the general tone
to the earthly mistress is purified in word, if not always in
thought, by the reverence which belongs to the Queen of
heaven. This was the poetry of chivalry, the religious
poetry ; and in an imaginative age the poetry, if far, very
far, above the actual life, cannot be absolutely without in-
fluence on that life. If this ideal love, in general, existed
only in the outward phrase, in the ceremonial address, in the

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS ,

sonnet, or in the song, . . . yet on the whole the elevation
even the inharmonious religiousness, of chivalry must havd <
wrought for the benefit of mankind. War itself became, if no
less sanguinary, conducted with more mutual respect, with some
restraint. Christian chivalry, in Spain and in the Holy Land
encountered Asiatic Mahommedan chivalry. For in the Arab, in
most of the Oriental races, there was a native chivalry, as amon^
the Teutonic or European Christians. If Achilles, as has beer
finely said, is a model of knighthood, so is the Arabian Antar
both Achilles and Antar may meet in Richard Coeur de Lion
though Saladin, perhaps (and Saladin described by Christian as
well as Mahommedan writers), may transcend all three. Hence
sprang courtesy, at least an initiatory humanity in war.

. . . The most intolerant strife worked itself into something!
bordering on toleration. There was a contest of honour, as oJ
arms. \

If, finally, the Crusades infused into the mind of Europe a
thirst for persecution long indelible,- — if they furnished an
authority for persecution which wasted continents and darkened
centuries with mutual hostility, yet chivalry, at once, as it were,
the parent and the child of the Crusades, left upon European
manners, especially in the high-born class, a punctilious regard
for honour, a generous reverence for justice, and a hatred
(perhaps a too narrow and aristocratical hatred) of injustice :
a Teutonic respect for the fair sex; an element, in short, of
true nobleness, of refinement, of gentleness, and of delicacy.
The chivalrous word courtesy designates a new virtue, not
ordained by our religion ; and words are not formed but out
of the wants, usages, and sentiments of men ; and courtesy is
not yet an obsolete term. Even gallantry, now too often sunk
to a frivolous or unnatural sense, yet retains something of its
old nobility, when it comprehended valour, frankness, honour-
able devotion to woman. The age of Chivalry may be gone,
but the influences of Chivalry, it may be hoped, mingling with
and softened by purer religion, will be the imperishable heirloom
of social man.1

1 1 Abridged from chap. vi. vol. iv. fourth edit.

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

A.D. IO99.

[From “ History of the Life of Richard Cceur de Lionf by G. P. R. James.)

During their march from Archas through Palestine all the
associations of the land had been crowding upon the imagina-
tions of the pilgrims of the Cross. The names of Ramula,
Sid on, Emaus, had all awakened the memories of what had
passed in those places in earlier days ; and at the latter town,
when they encamped for the evening, the host was joined by
envoys from the Christians at Bethlehem, beseeching the
leaders to send forward a body of men to protect that town
from the threatened vengeance of the Saracens. Tancred was
accordingly despatched, with a hundred lances, to give the assis-
tance required : but during the whole of that night the host of the
Crusade knew no repose. The name of Bethlehem, Bethlehem,
passed from mouth to mouth, recollections were awakened
that banished sleep, all the enthusiasms of their nature
were aroused, zeal, and tenderness, and love, and hope, and in-
dignation, for that sweet religion which they all professed, scared
away slumber from every eye, and some hours before dark-
ness disappeared the excitement became so great, that the
army arrayed itself spontaneously, and began to move towards
Jerusalem.

It was a beautiful summer morning, we are told, in the month
of June, and ere the great body of the Crusade had proceeded
many miles the day broke in all the majesty of Eastern light.
They had just reached the summit of a gentle hill, when, start-
ing up with the rapidity which characterises the dawn of Syria,
the sun rushed forth, and they beheld in the distance a rocky
steep, crowned with towers, and walls, and domes, and
minarets. “Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! ” became the cry through-
out the army, as the object of all their toil, and labour, and

A. D.

IO99

302

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

strife, and suffering appeared before their eyes. All that they
had endured up to that moment,— weariness, thirst, famine,
pestilence, and the sword, — were forgotten in exceeding great
joy, or only remembered to render that joy more ecstatic and
overpowering. The effect could scarcely be borne : some;
laughed, some wept, some shouted “ Hierosolyma ! ” some
cast themselves on the ground, some fainted, and some died!
upon the spot.

The more devout of the pilgrims pulled off their shoes, and,
approached the scene of our redemption barefoot ; but the!
general feeling which succeeded to the emotions produced by
the first sight of the city was wrath at seeing it in the hands'!
of the Infidel. The soldiery advanced with a strong determi-
nation of spending the last drop of their blood to free the
Redeemer’s tomb from the power of the Mussulman ; and
after a skirmish, in which some Saracens, who had come forth j
to reconnoitre, were driven in, the barbicans were carried by
Godfrey, Tancred, and others, the wall itself was reached, and
the assault commenced with mattocks, axes, and whatever
other instruments could be procured. Some short ladders
enabled the crusaders to climb up the wall, so as to urge the
strife with the enemy upon the battlements ; but those machines
were not sufficiently tall or numerous to afford any prospect
of success. The Saracens assailed the Christians, as they
approached, with stones, arrows, and Greek fire ; and as night
advanced it was found necessary to withdraw the troops of
the Crusade, and to delay any farther attack till catapults,
mangonels, and the usual implements of war had been pro-
vided. Wood for the construction of these machines was
procured from Sichon ; some Genoese seamen, who had landed
at Jaffa, and who were, famous for their skill in mechanics,
aided greatly in preparing the artillery afterwards used : but
still much time was occupied in this task ; and in the mean-
while a precaution taken by the commander of the Egyptians,
named Iftikhur-eddaule, or the Glory of the Empire, operated
terribly against the Christians. In the hottest and most arid
part of the year, he had filled up all the wells, and the streams
had been dried by the sun : such was the drought in the Chris-
tain camp, that a drop of liquid was not to be procured for a

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

303

piece of gold. Springs, however, were at length discovered at
a considerable distance from the city ; but the service of pro-
curing water was a very dangerous one, as the Mussulman
forces infested the whole of the surrounding country, and cut
off any small bodies which strayed from the Christian camp.

It is scarcely possible to arrive with any degree of certainty
at the number of men with which the crusading leaders now
besieged Jerusalem. It has been estimated at every different
amount, from forty thousand to nearly a million. The former
is the lowest number given by the crusaders themselves ; the
latter, we need hardly say, is the highest estimate of the Arabs. . . .

Of the forces within the city of Jerusalem itself, we have
better information, the regular garrison consisting of forty
thousand men, besides both a vast number of Mussulman
peasantry, who had taken refuge in the city, and the population
which it contained at other times. It would certainly appear
that Jerusalem presented in its defence as many men in a con-
dition to bear arms as those which sat down before its walls.
It was strongly fortified also, and its inhabitants were fresh,
vigorous, and well supplied, while the crusaders were wearied,
wasted, and without provisions. This, therefore, was in every
respect the greatest and most difficult enterprise, as well as the
crowning object, of the whole Crusade.

The modern city comprised within its fortifications four of
the mountains, or rather hills, on which the capital of the
Hebrews was anciently seated. These were Moria, Golgotha,
Bezetha, and Acra; Mount Sion had been left out in the
:ircuit of the walls, though it would appear that they extended
some way up the rise of that hill. On three sides the place
was defended by deep valleys; the Valley of Josaphat on the
east, that of Ennom on the south, and a lateral branch of the
same valley on the west : on the north the approach was open.
A narrow valley also divided the old town into two parts, the
largest of which was Mount Moria, a great portion of Sion
being, as we said, left out.

The camp of the crusaders, as at first marked out, extended
from the north-eastern angle to the most western gate of the
city ; Godfrey himself with his troops ending the line towards
the east, and the Count of St. Giles towards the west. But

3°4

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

shortly after the various posts had been assigned, the Provencal
leader, finding that the deep valley between him and the walls
must prove a continual obstacle to his operations, removed
with a part of his troops to the rise of Mount Sion, notwith-
standing the strenuous opposition of the other leaders, who
were greatly offended by this proceeding, and refused to give
him any assistance in defending his new camp. He contrived,
nevertheless, to seduce a number of the soldiery from the!
quarters of his neighbours ; and thus the dissensions, as well
as the vices, of the Crusaders were renewed under the walls of 1
Jerusalem, and seem not to have been less than at Antioch or*
Mar rah.

The constructions of the machines went on, however, from i
day to day, and a period was fixed for the recommencement of j
the attack. The importance of the undertaking, the probable \
death of many there present, the revival of hopes and expecta- :
tions caused by preparations for the last grand effort, at length ;
re-awakened in the bosoms of the crusaders the finer and i
higher feelings which had at one time entirely possessed them.
The princes met together and consulted ; the clergy interposed,
and represented how unfit were men soiled with vices, and
heated with contention amongst themselves, to fight for the
deliverance of the Sepulchre of Christ, and attempt the j
recovery of the City of God. The hearts of the hearers were ;
melted, and setting an example to the whole host, Tancred
offered to be reconciled to his enemy the Count of Toulouse,
and embraced him in the face of the army. All the other
quarrels and dissensions ceased at the same time. The princes
and the soldiery were exhorted to repent by Peter the Hermit,
who had now recovered a considerable portion of his influence ;
and a solemn procession round the walls took place to the
sounds of psalms and hymns, while the priests bore the symbols
of salvation, barefooted, and the warriors followed, repeating
aloud, “ God wills it ! God wills it ! ” Various acts of devo-
tion and penance were performed; and the excitement of
men’s minds caused the enthusiastic to see visions and hear
prophecies, and the credulous to believe them. But as the
hour approached, hope and expectation were raised as well as
superstition, and one of the military proceedings of Godfrey,

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

3°5

which had something marvellous in its character, increased the
confidence of the people.

Various warlike machines, of great power and immense
bulk, had been constructed opposite those points in the fortifi-
cations which the leaders intended to attack ; but the Duke of
Lorraine had remarked that where he, the Count of Flanders,
and Robert of Normandy had sat down, the Saracens had
never ceased to strengthen their defences. The walls, also,
were there extremely high, the ditch deep, and the valley
rugged, and, not long before the assault took place, Godfrey
formed the sudden determination of moving the immense
tower, and all the other large engines which he had con-
structed, as well as his camp itself, to a spot between the gate
of St. Stephen and the valley of Josaphat, nearly a mile from
his former position. The ground there was more even, and the
Saracens, not expecting attack upon that side, had made no
addition to the defences, so that a fairer prospect of success
was to be found in that quarter. In the course of one night
the whole of this operation was completed, the engines were
taken down, carried piece by piece to the spot selected, and
then reconstructed ; and when day dawned on the following
morning, the Christians and the Saracens were both astonished
to behold the camp of Godfrey pitched opposite the weakest
point of the city. Some time was still occupied in filling up
a part of the ditch so as to enable the machines to be brought
close to the walls ; but at length all was completed, and on the
morning of Thursday, the 14th of July, 1099, the attack com-
menced. The soldiers of the Crusade took their places in the
moveable towers, which were raised to such a height as to
overtop the walls ; the catapults were pushed forward to batter
the defences, and the sow was dragged along to sap the
foundations, while the mangonels and balista were brought as
near as possible, to cast masses of stone and darts with the
greatest possible effect.

As soon as the Saracens beheld the Christian army in
motion, showers of arrows and javelins were poured forth from
the battlements, and when the towers and the instruments for
the sap came nearer, immense pieces of rock, beams of wood,
balls of flame, and torrents of the unextinguishable Greek fire,

3°6

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

were cast down upon the heads of the Crusaders. Still, how-
ever, they rushed on, undaunted and unchecked ; the knights
of the highest reputation occupying the upper storeys of the
towers, while Godfrey himself was seen armed with a bow,
and exposed to all the shafts of the enemy, sending death
around him with an unerring hand.

In the meanwhile a great number of the soldiers were busily
employed in working the machines, while others covered the
operations of those who had approached close to the wall by
incessant flights of arrows. The Saracens, however, opposed
them with the energy of men fighting for their hearths and
homes, and the valour of the Crusaders themselves was only
equal to the determined courage of the defenders of Jerusalem.
From morning till nightfall the combat continued, but at length
darkness fell over the earth, and the city was not yet taken.
The walls of Jerusalem were much injured, as were also the
military engines of the besiegers ; but during the night both
hosts laboured diligently, and the damage done was repaired
before the morning.

The fifteenth of the month dawned at length, and found the
Crusaders in no degree discouraged by their previous want of
success. On the contrary, the strife of the preceding day
seemed but to have added fierceness and vehemence to their
valour, and the assault recommenced with the same activity as
on the first day. All the strong and active men in the army
were engaged in the attack. Those whom the military
machines could not contain were occupied in plying the
mangonels and battering-rams. The old and the feeble, too,
busied themselves in bringing up missiles and assisting the
wounded ; and the women mingled with the soldiers, bearing
to them needful supplies of water and provisions. Thus lasted
the fight through the greater part of Friday, and victory seemed
as far off as ever. A great deal of confusion and disarray
existed in the ranks of the Crusaders ; many were slain, many
more were wounded, and scarcely any progress had been made
in battering the walls, or breaking down the gates. The
shower of arrows and other missiles from the battlements
was as fierce as ever; and several of the Christian soldiery
were seen withdrawing from the ranks, when suddenly, on a

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

307

conspicuous part of Mount Olivet, a knight in shining armour
was beheld waving on the dismayed Crusaders to return to the
attack.

A cry spread through th'e army that St. George had come
down from heaven to help them. All eyes beheld the figure
of him on whom this designation was bestowed; and with
renewed courage they rushed again to the assault.

As usually happens on such occasions, two or three advan-
tages were gained at different points, nearly at the same
moment. The gate of St. Stephen shook under the blows of
Tancred, Robert of Normandy, and the Count of Flanders.
An immense gabion of straw and cotton, which had been let
oown to protect the wall from the blows of a battering-ram
placed near Godfrey of Bouillon himself, was set on fire and
destroyed. The flames, which for a moment were very violent,
drove the defenders from that part of the battlements ; the
moveable tower of the Duke was pushed up close to the wall,
and one side of the highest stage being, as usual, constructed
so as to let down and form a sort of bridge, was suffered to
descend. A knight of Tournay, called Lutold, at that moment
set the example to the whole host, and sprang from the plat-
form upon the rampart of the besieged city. Another followed,
and then Godfrey, Baldwin de Bourg, and Eustace, the brother
of the Duke, one after another, leaped down to the support of
Lutold.

Who carried the standard of the Cross we are not told, but
at that moment it was seen floating , over the walls of Jerusalem,
and with loud shouts the whole crusading army pressed forward
to assail the city with furious energy. An insta.nt after the
gate of St. Stephen gave way, and Tancred and the two
Roberts rushed in, followed by the troops of Normandy,
Flanders, and Otranto. By this time a breach had been
effected in another part of the wall ; and there, too, the Ger-
man soldiers were entering in crowds, while numbers of the
most resolute and gallant soldiers in the army poured down
from the tower, to support Godfrey and his companions in
possession of the Vail.

The news soon reached the Count of Toulouse on the other
side of the city that his companions were within the gates ;

x 2

308

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

and emulous of their achievement, he abandoned the efforts he
was making from his moveable tower, caused scaling-ladders to
be brought, and effected an entrance by escalade.

Despair took possession of the Mahommedan population ;
but it wras not a cowardly despair, and they protracted the
struggle in the streets for a considerable time. Some of the
Crusaders gave themselves up to plunder ; but Godfrey and the
great mass of the Christian force thought of nothing but
slaughter. They recollected all the barbarous cruelties which
had been exercised during several centuries upon the faithful ;
they recollected that but a few days before they had seen the
men with whom they now fought hand to hand, raising the
symbol of Christ’s sufferings upon the walls of the very city
where He suffered, and casting filth and ordure upon the sign
of our salvation. They drove them through the streets, they
followed them into the houses, they slaughtered them in the
temples. For many hours no mercy was shown; and in one
day, the fierce sword of enthusiastic intolerance did more than
avenge the wrongs of four hundred years.

The most terrible slaughter that took place was in the
mosque of Omar, where an immense body of the Mussulman
population had taken refuge, and in which they made a furious
and determined resistance. It was some time before the Cru-
saders could force their way in, but when they had done so,
the massacre was awful. The blood poured from the temple
in streams, and we are assured that in the court the flood of
gore, before it could escape, rose to the knees of the mounted
knights and the bridles of the horses. Ten thousand men
were slain therein, and several thousand took refuge on the roof
of the temple, and prepared to defend themselves to the last.

The day was now too far spent for the Crusaders to attack
them in this last stronghold, and as the fierceness of strife was
now beginning to subside, the thirst for infidel blood was well
nigh sated. Even on that first day a great number were spared ;
and on the second, the only farther slaughter that took place
occurred at the fatal mosque of Omar. It would appear, from
ftq account of Robert, that the conquerors offered their lives
to the, Saracen soldiery if they would surrender: but the
Mussulmen, well knowing that slavery was to be their destiny

3°9

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

if they submitted, ma.de up tbeir minds to death. The passage
to the top of the temple was forced by the Christians, and
many of the Saracens were slaughtered on the roof, many cast
themselves down and were dashed to pieces.

Such was the close of this terrible scene, which in itself
possesses too many painful and distressing points to need
those efforts which have been liberally bestowed in the present
age, to make it appear more lamentable and shocking than it
really was. Everything has been done to create an impression
that the slaughter was indiscriminate and universal, and that it
was generally renewed on the second day, for the purpose of
exterminating the whole of the Mahommedan population of
Jerusalem. We have the testimony of eye-witnesses to prove
that even on the very day of the storming great numbers were
spared ; and there is not the slightest reason to believe that
any massacre at all took place on the second day, except in
the temple, where the determined resistance of the Mussulmen
left the crusaders no choice. The most convincing testimony,
however, is that of the Arab writer, Ibngiouzi, who tells us that
one half of the population was spared. He computes the
amount of the slain at a hundred thousand, which was very
nearly the number of fighting men supposed to be within the
city.

As soon as the capture of Jerusalem was complete, and the
great work for which they had come so many miles, and
endured so many evils, was accomplished, the leaders of the
Crusade threw off the panoply of war, and putting on the vest-
ments of penitents, proceeded from one holy place to another,
to offer up their adorations with prayers and tears. The places
of peculiar sanctity were purified and washed from the blood
with which they were stained, and the grand consideration then
became, how the Christian dominion, which it had cost so
much to re-establish in the East, could be best maintained,
surrounded as it was on every side by infidel enemies, whom
every principle of policy should have taught to unite for the
purpose of crushing the small body of inveterate foes which
had succeeded in planting the banner of the Cross where the
standard of Islam had so long stood unassailed.

Some time before the capture of the city of Jerusalem, the

3io

HISTORICAL SELECTION’S.

difficulties and dangers which surrounded the Crusaders had
called forth a proposal which no one had dreamed of at the
commencement of the Crusade. A part of the troops clamoured
loudly for the election of a King ; and the dissensions which
had taken place amongst the leaders, with the general want of
unity in object, and in action, which had been conspicuous
in all their proceedings since the siege of Antioch, certainly
showed, in a manner likely to convince the blindest, that a
leader was wanting, endowed with greater powers than those
which the princes of the Crusade had conferred upon Godfrey.
So general was this feeling that, at the end of eight days, the
principal chiefs met together to elect a King of Jerusalem.

It might well be supposed that intrigues and dissensions
would mark the choice of the princes ; but no such events
occurred, and there seems to have been very little doubt or
hesitation in the mind of any one.

“ By the common decree of all,” says Robert the Monk,
“ by universal wish, and general assent, the Duke Godfrey was
elected, on the eighth day after the capture of the city ; and
well did they all concur in such a choice, for he showed him-
self such in his government, that he did more honour to the
royal dignity than that dignity conferred on him. This honour
did not make him illustrious, but the glory of the honour was
multiplied by him. . . . He showed himself so superior and
excellent in royal majesty, that if it had been possible to bring
all the kings of the earth around him, he would have been
judged by all, the first in chivalrous qualities, in beauty of face
and body, and noble regularity of life.” Nor is Fulcher of
Chartres less laudatory ; after describing the conquest of Jeru-
salem, he says, “ Godfrey was the first prince made, who, from
the excellence of his nobility, his valour as a knight, his gen-
tleness of manners, modest patience, and admirable morals,
the whole people of the army of God elected as chief of the
kingdom of the holy city, to reign therein and to preserve it.”

Godfrey was probably one of the few who did not seek the
honour imposed upon him, but, on the contrary, notwithstand-
ing the pressing entreaties of his fellow princes, he declined to
receive the title of King, declaring that he would never wear a
crown of gold in a city where his Saviour had worn a crown of

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

3il

thorns, and that he was contented with the title of Defender
of the Holy Sepulchre. . . .

The life of this great and good prince was short, but it was
active and important The conquest of Jerusalem itself, a
place regarded with nearly as much veneration by the Mussul-
men as by the Christians, was calculated to rouse the whole
Mahommedan world to arms, and the necessity of proving to
the enemies of the Cross that the Christians were able to
defend, as well as recover, the Holy Land, was soon shown by
the assembling of a large Saracen army in the neighbourhood
of Ascalon, within a very short distance of the capital.

Godfrey and his companions immediately marched from
Jerusalem to attack the Vizier, and both armies prepared for a
decisive battle. The enemy remained waiting the attack, but
the charge of the Crusaders was so impetuous that the Mussul-
men do not seem to have resisted for a moment.

Their numbers were so great that they embarrassed each
other in the flight, and the slaughter which took place was
tremendous. The series of victories which had attended the
arms of the Crusaders, thus crowned by such a splendid
triumph, drove the Mahommedan population of Syria to de-
spair ; and multitudes, both of Turks and Egyptians, now fled
from the country which had been conquered by warriors of
their own faith more than three centuries before, and took
refuge in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. Several of the Mussul-
man towns, however, were suffered to remain under their own
princes, upon condition of paying tribute ; and indeed for a
considerable time after the conquest of Jerusalem the forces of
the newly-established Christian kingdom were too small for the
subjection of the whole territory. The power of the Christian
princes was afterwards greatly increased by the influx of Cru-
saders from Europe ; but before any such accession of strength
was received by the infant kingdom, Godfrey himself was taken
ill, on his return from a distant expedition, and died in July, A
1100, at the age of forty, having reigned not quite one year.1 1
1 Abridged from chap. i. vol. iii.

312

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS, AND ACCESSION OF
HENRY THE FIRST.

A.D. IIOO.

From “ History of England and Normandy by Sir F. Pa lg rave.

a.d. William the Conqueror had been fully able to subjugate
iioo the English, but the extreme vexation they sustained from the
rigour of his forest laws well-nigh destroyed the empire he
founded. Violations of a law higher than the law of nature,
those abuses of the power over the earth and the earth’s pro-
ducts, which man possesses by delegation and not as an
inherent right, have continued to be the source of discontent
and resistance from generation to generation. The hateful
forest laws assisted in placing our first Charles upon the
scaffold ; and, in a scarcely mitigated form, continue to
embitter the poor against the rich at the present day. This
code was not William’s — it was Canute’s ; but the cruelty with
which the Conqueror extended and enforced the odious juris-
prudence occasioned unmitigated horror. The New Forest
of Hampshire, as the ancient Jetten-Wald, the Weald of Giants,
now began to be called, was deemed the consummation of
selfish cruelty. . . . And of all the sins committed by William,
none, in popular opinion, ought to have hung heavier on his
soul than the merciless selfishness which had driven away the
inhabitants, sparing neither the home of man nor the house of
God, to give range for the hound and room for the deer.

. . . The vestiges of the former populations which whilome
cheered the Jetten-Wald, rendered the royal solitude more un-
unnatural and desolate ; they testified against the waste of
tyranny.

The years circling on since the Conqueror’s death had
rendered the scene more pensive and more lovely. The tofts
where the cottages once stood no longer betrayed the fresh

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS.

313

tokens of desolation. The door had been broken away from
the hinges, the ground-plot overgrown with gorse and fern, the
hearth-stone concealed by heath and harebell; the unroofed
and dilapidated chancel was tapestried with ivy, and the
bright foxglove and sweet twining honeysuckle adorned and
perfumed the altar, springing amidst the rifted slabs, watered by
the dews of heaven.

Amongst the sixty churches which had been ruined, the
sanctuary below the mystic Malwood1 was peculiarly remarkable ;
all around had been stamped by Rufus as peculiarly his own.
You reach the Malwood easily from the leafy lodge in the
favourite deer-walk, the Lind-hurst, the Dragon’s-wood, where
Rufus was wont to bouse and carouse, preparing for the sport
ending with “ the breaking of the deer/’ the joyous butchery.
A scanty and gloomy inhabitancy dwelt dispersed amidst the
vast silence of this magnificent desolation ; the forest-swains,
grudging against the King’s delights ; fierce and burly prickers
and keepers, their coarse natures aggravated by the cruelty of
their calling and their privileged impunity in all acts of oppres-
sion and wrong; here and there the grim charcoal-burner,
whose employment, like that of his cousin-miners, was often
hereditary, and some few families of English churls, the relics
of the peasantry evicted and rejected by their Sovereign.

If any vestiges of the primaeval belief of the Teutons, any
practices derived from their mystic rites, subsisted amongst the
English people, — the augury disclosing futurity, the song
bestowing fertility upon the field, the dire imprecation against
the enemy, — they would surely be fostered amongst such soli-
tudes, now becoming more appalling. Nocturnal demons
haunted the forests ; grim riders on the coal-black steeds, whose
horns resounded, driving before them loathly hounds with
fiery eyes. More terrific, the visions of meridian day. In the
full brightness of noon, when the sportsman galloped along
the clear green paths — those forest roads in which some latent

1 Why Malwood should be called mystic we do not quite understand.
Castle Malwood is a fort, nearly square, with a single vallum, and a ram-
part now covered with trees. The keeper’s lodge stands where the keep
once was. About a mile thence is Cadenham oak, which used to be sup-
posed to bud, like the Glastonbury thorn, on Christmas night. — C. M. Y.

3 14

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

cause checks the sapling’s growth — uprose the gaunt spectre.
Fiends grinned at the wayfarer through bush and brier.

Rufus braved and scorned these fantastic portents : no goblin
could scare him from the Jetten-Wald; nevertheless, it was
strange that he could conceal from himself the sad realities
marking the ground as accursed to the Norman dynasty. Here
had his brother Richard died;1 none could precisely declare r
the cause of Richard’s death. Imagination dared not clothe
the fact with any additional circumstances — neither wonder- j
ment, nor curiosity, nor malignity, had raised any accusing
suspicions which might designate the author of the deed,
shrouded by indelible melancholy. Were the sins of the
fathers to be here visited on the children, the ancestors’ weird
to fall on their progeny? The locality suggested ideas of
blood, and afforded the opportunity for deeds of blood. With
most men, such scenes inspire instinctive dread ; but Rufus
felt no foreboding, and took no heed. He was fascinated by an
irresistible influence, — constantly called to the New Forest by a
voice he could not disobey.

The Forest was his home ; all was his own within the fatal
boundary : the vert and the venison, the turf and the tree, the
soil and the air, every living creature which flew on the wing or
coursed along the ground, bird and beast, man, and man’s
destiny, all were within his power. No law, no will, except the
King's, absolute, unchecked, unlimited, unwatched, uncontrolled ;

. . . could Rufus here dread any mischance, any enmity? . . .

D- But (in July, a.d. iioo) the land teemed with anticipations of
00 evil menacing the King. Omens doomed him. Whenever people
assembled, whether they gathered in the church-porch or lingered
in the churchyard, or met in the market-place, the Tyrant’s j
speedy death was the matter about which every one talked.

The rumours increased the contagious excitement. The
feelings worked upon men’s minds incessantly; they could not
drive away the haunting presentiments of impending judgment.

1 Richard, Du Beorince , as an inscription in Winchester Cathedral calls
him, died in the New Forest in 1081 ; reports varying as to whether he was j
killed by the horn of a stag at bay, or by being dashed against the branches ;
of a tree, or by a fever from the marshes. Another Richard, illegitimate
son of Robert of Normandy, also perished in the New Forest by an .
accident from an arrow in May, 1108. — C. M. Y.

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS.

315

To a monk at Gloucester there appeared a dread and solemn
phantasm, pictured from the prevailing symbolism, such as
might be seen figured in a deep and gloomy crypt, the stern
mosaics gleaming in the concave apse, and rising above the
tieaps of skulls and bones filling the charnel caverns; the
vision indicated that the King would meet with immediate
death— a shaft directed by unerring vengeance, such as had
befallen Julian the Apostate, the punishment of his iniquities.
The impression was so marked and singular, that old Serlo,
the Abbot, immediately determined to communicate all the
circumstances to Rufus, whether believing the portent, or deem-
ing that he was bound to seize a good and favourable
opportunity of addressing a word of advice to the King, remon-
strating against his intolerable and disgusting licentiousness and
debauchery.

Whatever dread Rufus inspired, it now became impossible to
silence the voices of grief, remonstrance, and supplication.
On the 1st day of August, St. Peter ad Vincula, the Gule1 of
August, Fulchard, abbot of Shrewsbury, being at Gloucester,
was invited to preach on the festival of the Convent’s patron
saint. Bitterly did the preacher deplore the miseries, temporal
and spiritual, of England, and yet with hope that in some way
there would be a deliverance from the pressing calamities.

While such were the popular sentiments, Rufus — to whom
they were thoroughly known — acted as if he were intoxicated
with joy and prosperity, most busily making ready for war
against his brother,2 overflowing with life and vigour, he pur-
sued his pleasures with equal pertinacity, and whilst the vessels
were fitting out on the coast, he enjoyed himself in the cool

1 The Gule of August is an old name for the Feast of St. Peter-in-the-
Fellers, so old that mediaeval writers accounted for it by inventing a legend
of a Roman lady cured of a disease in the throat gula by kissing St. Peter’s
chains. It is no doubt the same word as Yule. It is the summer Yule, as
Christmas is the winter Yule, both alike coming from a word meaning
wheel or circle, applied to the festival of the Solstice. It must have slipped
on from Midsummer to August by some error. Gwyl in W elsh means a feast ;
Gul in Irish an anniversary or a wheel ; both, no doubt, from the same
source. Lammas is either Loaf-mas or Lamb-mas, probably the former, the
offering of the first-fruits. — C. M. Y.

2 Probably to hinder Robert from regaining Normandy on his return to
England.

316 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

shades of the Jetten-Wald; . . . and when Fulchard, abbot oh
Shrewsbury, was preaching at Gloucester, and England per- !
vaded with expectant terror, Rufus assembled a large and;
jovial party in the leafy lodge of the Lindwood, the Dragon’s \
Wood, the most pleasant of his bowers. His brother Henry,
William de Breteuil, Gilbert de Aquila, Gilbert Fitz-Richard,
Robert Fitz-Hamo, Ralph de Aix, or de Aquis, and Walter!
Tyrrell,1 together with a vast meisney of the court-followers,
prickers, verdurers, ribalds. Rufus never moved unless en- i
circled by the vilest ruffianage.

Rufus was exuberant in his conversation, boisterous ; he
addressed his conversation to Tyrrell in particular, roughly and
merrily, insult mingled with whim and familiarity. The Chas-
tellain of Poix was excited up to the same tone, and flouted
Rufus in return. He joked to teaze the King, mocked him,
telling him that whilst all was open and the way clear, Breton !
and Augevine at his command, he did nothing, in spite of all
his great words and talk. Rufus became more coarse and rude,
and, unmindful of any national pride which Tyrrell might feel,
boasted how he would lead his army beyond the Alps, and
hold his court at Poitiers next Christmas. Tyrrell laughed at
such a vaunt. “ To the Alps and back again within so short
a time ? But if ever they submit to the English,” continued
Tyrrell, “an evil death may Frenchmen and Burgundian die !”
The dialogue began in jest, but ended in anger. The ranting!
words thus passing were marked, repeated, perhaps exagge-
rated. It should seem that few, if any of the party, could be
said to have been in a state of sobriety.

Night closed in, the darkness brought a sudden sadness '
upon the King’s heart : when alone, how troubled, how un-
happy was Rufus ! In the still of the night, the last night
season in which he laid himself down to sleep, but not in
peace, the attendants were startled by the King’s voice — a
bitter cry — a cry for help — a cry for deliverance. He had been
suddenly awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite
anguish befalling him in the ruined church at the foot of the
Mai wood rampart. No more would he be left alone ; the i

1 Walter Tyrrell was a man of large property in Ponthieu. Pie was >
sometimes called Gaultier de Poix. — C. M. Y.

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS.

317

extinguished lamps were lighted in the chamber, where Rufus
impatiently awaited the early morn.

Dawn broke on Thursday, the 2d of August, the morrow
of St. Peter ad Vincula ; Robert Fitz-PIamo entered, hastily,
anxious, bearing tidings of another warning given through the
dream of a holy monk beyond the sea, speaking clearly of
great and threatening danger ; he therefore earnestly supplicated
the King not to hunt for that one day. Rufus burst out into a
horse-laugh, “ He is a monk; monks dream for money : money
let him have, an hundred shillings, his fitting guerdon.” Rufus
showed no signs of fear ; yet a secret misgiving, unconfessed
even to himself, weighed upon his soul. Many of the party
agreed with Fitz-Hamo, and thought caution might be advis-
able. Rufus lingered and paused. It was their custom to
hunt in the morning-tide, but Rufus postponed the sport till
the afternoon, and the mid-day banquet was served before
him. Fie indulged even more than usual in food and wine ;
the debauch was prolonged till the decline of day, when Rufus
rose, reeking from the table, and, surrounded by his joyous
companions, prepared to start. An armourer presented the
King with six newly-headed shafts for the deadly arbalest.
Rufus took them, tried them, and selecting the two keenest,
gave them (as the confused report afterwards prevailed) to
Tyrrell, telling the Chastellain of Poix (according to one of
the versions which became current) that it was he who de-
served the arrow— let that bowman bear the prize who can
best deal the mortal wound : and others also recounted that he
afterwards cried out to Tyrrell, “ Shoot , Devil;” or, “ Shoot in
the DeviTs name.”

Still more delay. Rufus continued in vehement and idle
talk; the evening was coming on, when Serlo’s messenger
appeared. More cause of laughter for Rufus, mixed with a
nettled feeling of impatient anger. “ It is strange,” said he,
“ that my Lord Serlo, the wise and discreet, should teaze me,
tired and harassed as I am with business, by transmitting to
me such stories and silly dreams. Does he think I am an
Englishman, who will put off a journey for an old wife’s fancy,
a token, or a sign?” He rose hastily; the saddled steed was
brought.

318

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Rufus, placing his foot in the great stirrup, vaulted on his j ^
courser ; the hunters now dispersed, Henry in one direction,
William de Breteuil in another, Rufus in a third, dashing on ;
towards the depths of the Forest, through the chequered gleams j
of transparent green, the lengthened lines of cheerful shade,
the huge stems shining in the golden light of the setting sum

No man ever owned that he had spoken afterwards to
Rufus. No man owned to having again heard the voice of
Rufus, except in the inarticulate agonies of death. Separated
unaccountably from his suite and companions, Robert Fitz-
Hamo and Gilbert de Aquila found him expiring, stretched on
the ground, within the walls of the ruined church just below
the Malwood Castle, transpierced by the shaft of a Norman
arbalest, the blood gurgling in his throat.

It is said they tried to pray with him, but in vain. Forth-
with ensued a general dispersion. Hunters and huntsmen, earl
and churl, scattering in every direction. It seemed as if the i
intelligence sounded out of the ground throughout the Forest, j
At the same time a consentaneous outcry arose — no one can
tell how it began— that Walter Tyrrell had slain the King. All
the ruffian soldiery, the ribalds, the villainous and polluted
court-retainers who surrounded Rufus, vowing vengeance against
the traitor, began a hot pursuit ; but while they were chafing
and scurrying after Tyrrell, many would have protected him,
either believing in his innocence or rejoicing in the deed.
Tyrrell fled as for his life, and crossing the river, at the ford
which bears his name, he baffled his pursuers. A yearly rent,
payable into the Exchequer by the Lord of the Manor through
which the water flows, is traditionally supposed to have been
the fine imposed for the negligence in permitting the escape of
the accused murderer. Be this as it may, Tyrrell received no i
further impediment, and passing over to France he settled in
his Seigneury of Poix, where he lived long, honoured and
respected ; but though holding (as it is supposed) lands in
Essex, and connected by marriage with the Giffords, he never
returned again to England. Suger, the abbot of St. Denis,
the historian of France, the prime minister of Louis le Gros,
was intimately acquainted with him. Often and often did
Tyrrell declare in Suger’s presence, when there was no more

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS .

319

room either for hope or fear, and as he looked for salvation,
that on the day of the King’s death he never approached the
part of the Forest in which Rufus hunted, or had seen him
after he entered therein. . , .

... In the course of that same day, Friday, the 3d of
August, the feast of the Invention of Saint Stephen,1 towards
evening, a country cart, followed by a few churls, and dragged
by one sorry horse, drove into the Close of Saint Swithin’s
Minster at Winchester ; the vehicle contained the defiled corpse
of ghastly Rufus, bloody . . . covered with filth and mire,
hideous as the carcase of a wild boar. Gilbert de Aquila,
Robert Fitz-Hamo, all had abandoned the dead man, and
there the corpse was left lying, exposed like worthless carrion,
saved from crow and dog and vermin only by the piety of a
neighbouring charcoal-burner, Purkis, who took compassion
on the body, and conveyed the remains from the solitude
where the mortal wound was received.

Great was the doubt whether Rufus could be buried in con-
secrated ground. No formal sentence of excommunication
had been pronounced against him, but his wickedness was so
notorious, his vices so detestable, that by universal consent,
Rufus was felt and acknowledged to be unworthy of Christian
sepulture. Respect for royal authority so far prevailed, that a
grave was dug for him in the Cathedral Choir, and his bones
are deposited in the same sacred structure with those of Ina
and the old West-Saxon kings ; but no obsequies were cele-
brated, no bells tolled, no alms given, no prayers offered for
the repose of his soul ; all men thought that prayers were hope-
less. No emblem of faith, no symbol of holiness, no cross, no
monogram, no Scripture text, no verse, no versicle, no ejacu-
lation, not even a name or the initial of a name is engraved
upon that silent tomb beneath which he lies. We are not told

1 In 413 a tomb at Jerusalem was “revealed ” to a priest named Lucian
by a dream of the appearance of Gamaliel, who told him of having there
buried St. Stephen, Nicodemus, and his own son Abdias, and of having been
there buried himself. On search being made, four coffins were made, one
of which bore the name Cheliel, the Syriac equivalent for Stephen. 1 he
remains of St. Stephen were taken to Jerusalem on his own day, the. 26th
of December, but the 3d of August was kept as the feast of the Invention
i.e. the finding. — C. M. Y.

320 HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

that Purkis received any reward or thanks for his care. His
family still subsists in the neighbourhood, nor have they risen
above their original station, poor craftsmen or cottagers. They
followed the calling of coal-burners until a recent period, and
they tell us that the wheel of the cart which conveyed the
neglected corpse was shown by them until the last century. . . .

. . . Not long after the interment of Rufus, a terrible crash
spread dismay throughout Winchester. The great, ponderous,
cathedral tower lately raised by Walkeline, fell down, and the
common people immediately and universally accepted this ;
event as a sign that the holy ground was indignant at becoming
the depository of the late King’s defiled corpse. That a mere
accident, so ordinary and familiar, the collapse of an arch
hastily built on an insufficient foundation, should be thus
construed, is a remarkable proof of the detestation which
Rufus had inspired.

Very many reports continued to be spread concerning the j
cause of his death, all bespeaking the general sentiment, f
disgust, loathing, horror. No one affected pity, or feigned a
hope that Rufus had been moved to contrition, or had obtained
mercy.

Some said that, at the moment when Rufus expired, he had
been seen carried away upon an enormous black goat, who
declared that he was the Fiend bearing the Tyrant to eternal
punishment. Though no one could state his evidence, every-
body seemed at first to have his own story. Some said that
Walter Tyrrell found him stone dead, and had run away from
apprehension of accusation ; others that Ralph de Aquis was ;
the man-slayer ; whilst not a few maintained that Rufus
certainly perished through his own impetuosity in straining the
stiff arbalist ; his foot had slipped, and he was killed by his own
starting weapon. Be this as it may, the charge brought against
Ralph de Aquis was abandoned. That Tyrrell was the inno-
cent, or perhaps meritorious, author of the King’s death, became
the version accepted by a species of compromise. However,
in the manner commonly related, the narrative is evidently as
much a fiction as the vision of the demon. No one ever
acknowledged being present when the King was struck, j
Tyrrell always denied the fact : therefore the details of the j

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS.

321

glancing of the arrow, and the like, which appear in popular
history, must have been pure and gratuitous inventions.

There was another story in general circulation : that about
the very hour when Rufus breathed out his soul, Henry Beau-
clerc, having recently parted from him, was hunting in another
and distant part of the Jetten-Wald. His arbalest sprung. The
accident happened in a spot where some few inhabitants still
were left — the relics of a thorp ; and here Henry, arriving at a
hovel inhabited by the family of an English landsman, alighted,
and employed himself in knotting his broken bow-string.

Whilst thus at work a crone hobbled forth, and inquired of
the lad who attended on him the stranger’s name. “ It is
Henry, brother of our lord the King.” Nay, nay,” mur-
mured she, “ say Henry the King : unless my spells be false,
before the hour passes Henry gains the royal crown.” Henry
mounts and spurs his steed — as he approaches the Lindwood,
riders come forth, first singly, then in increasing parties, and
he learns his brother’s death and his own good fortune, —
and thus was he enabled to hasten to Winchester, and, by
preventing that opposition which would certainly have arisen
had he delayed, to secure the throne.

Yet what was the truth? Were any of these stories true?
Was the King slain by the misadventure of Ralph de Aix,
or by the bow of the Chastellain of Poix, or by his own
impetuous negligence, or by some undiscovered and mur-
derous hand? All these questions were asked when the
masons were clamping and sealing the cover of the dumb
stone coffin in Winchester Cathedral, which still contains his
bones — that prayerless coffin without a name. No one could
answer the questions : no one could tell, or dared to tell.
Need we wonder that it is impossible for us even to guess at
the truth, when we recollect that the faithful Eadmer,- — the eye
and ear-witness of the transactions, which at the distance of
eight centuries we narrate from his words, — declares his utter
inability to dispel the doubts he raised ?

It is evident that Rufus was deprived of all human pru-
dence during the last days of his life. His own accusing
conscience, conjoined to the widely-spread omens and expecta-
tions of his death, might well have suggested the possibility of

J22

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

some conspiracy formed for his destruction. But he acted as
if he sought to invite the murderer. Even as the local recol-
lections of holiness sometimes dispose the heart to good, so is
there a more certain contagion in the recollections of crime.
Did we seek nothing more than mere comfort of mind, we
should strive to keep away from the Chamber, the Valley, the
Tree and the Rock, suggestive of iniquity or sin. Had the
necessity of caution been impressed upon Rufus in this par-
ticular instance, as a mere worldly duty, ... it is probable that
his shrewdness would have induced him to shun the spot
where his father’s tyranny and his own, and the greedy expect-
ancies to be gratified by his death, and the strange deaths also
of two kinsmen, might tempt the slaughter of a third member
of the Norman dynasty. But the warnings were given through
those who believed that the tokens came from above, and not
from man. Therefore Rufus would not believe them. He
derided and despised the faintest, feeblest echo of the Voice
of Heaven.

Henry Beauclerc, distant far away from where Rufus was
dying, reached Winchester with astonishing expedition, either
on the Thursday night or the Friday morning. William de
Breteuil (representing Robert of Normandy), however, had
anticipated him, and from them the inhabitants of the ancient
capital of Wessex first learned that they were delivered from the
dominion of the tyrant king. Beauclerc and Breteuil, adverse
to each other, had each the same immediate object : each
sought to win the kingdom’s heart, the Treasury .... Many of
the Baronage had already assembled : even clerks of the
Chancery were there, William Gifford the Chancellor — how
conveyed so speedily is untold, and in this most perplexing
passage of English history we dare not supply the absence of
direct information by conjecture.

Henry instantly demanded the Treasury keys as the lawful
heir of the kingdom, to whom the crown appertained by right.
William de Breteuil as resolutely contradicted these pretensions,
and denied Henry’s right and title ... We are all bound, said
he, addressing the multitude, by the promise which we have
given to Robert, King William’s first-born. We are all his
homagers : you, my Lord Henry, are his homager. You, my

ACCESSION OF HENRY THE FIRST

323

Lord Henry, owe him allegiance. We all owe him allegiance ;
and his absence renders the duty of fidelity more stringent. He
is away, a pilgrim of the Cross, and thus absent the crown has
devolved on him by the act of Providence.

Very near was Courthose, though absent; close on the
borders of Normandy; but he was absent, and that circum-
stance made all the difference. Plad the death of Rufus
happened a month, perhaps a week, later, Henry would have
had to measure his strength against Robert, re-established in
the Duchy, powerful, wealthy, respected, full of glory. . . .
Whoever had snapped the fatal arbalest, the shot was the best
possible shot for Henry Beauclerc, the right thing at the right
time.

Henry was immediately supported by the people— English-
men, the men of Winchester. Henry drawing his sword, spake
not as an aspirant to the throne, but as a Sovereign, and
appealed to the multitude. A great strife appeared imminent,
but the influence of this proud and energetic claimant, whom
they saw before them, prevailed. The Baronage acknowledged
Henry not so much from affection as out of dread of the
consequences of national disunion. Castle and treasure, so
honoured by the Cymric prophecies as the deposit of Arthur’s
round table and Walwain’s sword, surrendered to Henry. . . .
and before Rufus had been cast into his unhonoured grave,
the English people at Winchester had recognised King Henry,
Henry the Porphyrogenitus,1 the son of William the anointed
King, and Matilda the anointed Queen, born in England, bred
in England speaking the English language as his native
tongue, . . .

The tumultuous proclamation at Winchester being made,
Henry immediately comported himself as the King. He
showed himself such in right earnest by forthwith exercising

1 Here used to signify born after his father was king — a plea which
younger sons have often advanced to the succession. The word means,
“In purple-born,” and was first applied to such children of Roman
Emperors as were born after their father had assumed the purple insignia
of Empire. In allusion to this title the Empresses of the East gave birth
to their children in a chamber lined with porphyry and hung with purple.
— C. M. Y.

Y 2

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HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

one very important prerogative claimed by royalty, the pre-
rogative according to the views of the times, most inherent in
the Sovereign in person, the disposition of ecclesiastical patron-
age. William Gilford, the Chancellor, was called up, and
received from Henry the See of Winchester, just vacant by
the death of Walkeline. Henry neither waited for Papal
Bull, nor consulted Prior and Chapter. This, indeed, was
acting like the Conqueror’s son, and taking seizin of the
kingdom. . . .

. . . On the Sunday, the -fifth of August, the eleventh Sunday
after Trinity, the Feast of St. Oswald, we find Henry in
Westminster Abbey, where Clergy, Baronage, many sheriffs and
other functionaries of the realm had assembled ; he appeared
before the altar, and, by Maurice, Bishop of London, was
presented to the people who had called him to the throne.
This great transaction was grounded upon the assumption that
Henry should reform the abuses which had prevailed during
the two preceding reigns. The Conqueror’s engagements had
been imperfectly fulfilled. Rufus, passing all bounds, oppressed
Church and State by the most grievous tyranny. Henry
declared that he owed his crown to the people. . . . Ego nutu
Dei a clero et a populo Anglice electus A And he, Norman by
blood, and English by birth-place, was to be the deliverer of
the community.

A period of eleven days elapsed before Henry was finally
confirmed in the royal authority, in such manner as the novelty
of the case and the exigency of the times required. The out-
line, so to speak, of the national compact, was but sketched,
and then the details had to be filled. in. He began by giving
four promises and one refusal. He would restore the Church
to her liberty, that is to say liberty in his sense ; abstaining
from simoniacal bargains and the sale or farming of Church
lands. — All bad customs .and unjust exactions should cease
and be abolished — Peace be established, and firmly kept in
the kingdom — The Confessor’s law with the Conqueror’s
amendments restored ; but all the Conqueror’s forests must
continue in King Henry’s hands.— These declarations could

1 “I, elected by the will of God and by the people of England.”

ACCESSION OF HENRY THE FIRST.

325

not be received as satisfactory, neither the proffers nor the
reservation. None entirely trusted the King, and the dis-
putes which had taken place at Winchester were in danger of
being renewed. . . .

It should seem that the first impression upon the Great
Council (we use this expression, though somewhat inaccurate,
for the sake of brevity) was that the promises were vague in
consequence of their amplitude. Henry had undertaken that
all “ bad customs ” and “ unjust exactions ” should cease, and
be abolished. But unless specified, the question whether any
given custom was “ bad” or “ unjust ” would remain within the
judgment of the King ; and he was required, as we infer from
the speech he made not long afterwards, to give more specific
answers to their complaints and demands.

A custom prevailed somewhile in the Germanic Empire,
that upon the inauguration of a new Emperor, he should redress
and amend abuses, or make concessions to the states com-
posing the empire, a proceeding termed the Wahl- Cap itulatio n.
The electors were willing to admit, yet they kept their hands
upon the hasp, and held the door partly-to, until the full price
of admission was paid. The accession of Henry was, con-
fessedly, an election. All felt that the opportunity was not to
be lost, and the complaints and desires of the clergy, baronage,
and lieges, the French and the English, are read in the Statutory
Charters which resulted from their demands. . . .

As written out in the King’s chapel by the acute and con-
fidential clerks of the Chancery, the chapter relating to the
Church appears in the following form : —

Sanctam Dei Ecclesiam liberaw, facio : ita quod 7iec vendam
nec ad fir mam ponam , nec mortito Ai'chiepiscopo , sire Episcopo ,
sire Abb ate , aliquid accipiam de dominio Ecclesicz , vel homimbus
ejus , donee successor in earn ingrediatur} The first member of
the grant — Sanctam Dei Ecclesia7n liberam facio — is significantly
restrained by its subsequent explanation ; and the whole be-
speaks the submissive moderation of the clergy, the politic

1 “I make the holy Church of God free : so that I will not sell nor put
to farm, neither, whether an Archbishop, Bishop, or Abbot be dead,
will I take anything of the domain of the Church, or of the men thereof,
until a successor be entered into it.” — C. M. Y

326

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

prescience of the cabinet, and the firm determination of
Beauclerc not to recede from any of the Consuetudines , accord-
ing to which his father had ruled.

The Laity were bolder than the Clergy, and therefore far more
successful. The Barons, the immediate tenants of the crown,
reclaimed a fuller recognition of the right of inheritance than
had been allowed to them in the preceding reign. ... It was
needful that the King should renounce the extortions practised
by Rufus, who (upon the ancestor’s demise) compelled the
Baronage to redeem their lands at his pleasure ; and to stipulate
that they should render no more than the just relief— -four
horses , two saddled and two bridled , two hauberks, and two helms ,
and so on — the heriot, in fact, of later times ; and all bonds or
covenants which had been given by any tenant for the re-
demption of his inheritance were released and annulled.

Rufus had interfered beyond what the prerogative of the
sovereign allowed in the disposal of the daughters and other
female kindred of his baronage, exercising an abusive wardship
whilst the natural parent yet lived, exacting fines before he
would grant his marriage licence : also prohibiting such licence
arbitrarily and without reason. Henry consented to restrict
his right of refusal to those cases in which the proposed bride-
groom was an open and declared enemy, and utterly renounced
all fines for the permission ; other regulations were added,
particularly that widows should not be compelled to marry
entirely against their inclinations.

The rights which Rufus had usurped upon the Baronage had
been, in like manner, usurped by the Barons upon their inferior
tenants. If the proposed limitations of royal despotism had
not extended beyond the Baronage, the liberties granted to the
aristocracy would have become the slavery of the immediate
occupants of the soil ; but the latter were very influential at
this juncture, and the consequence was, that the concessions
made to the Barons were extended to the inferior tenancy, who
received the same boon.

With respect to taxes not much was said, possibly because
the Baronage considered that they would have the power of
refusal. ... A general release was granted for all debts to the
Crown, and all murder fines ; and the whole law of the Con-

ACCESSION OF HENRY THE FIRST

327

fessor, the whole constitution, as it subsisted under the last of
the Anglo-Saxon Sovereigns, was restored (with the Conqueror’s
emendations) to the people of England.

These terms were accepted ; the concessions, though clogged
by one grievous reservation, were most beneficial, and, upon
the feast of the Assumption, Henry, elected by the clergy and
the people, was, by the advice and assent of the Baronage,
solemnly consecrated and crowned, according to the ancient
ceremonial of the Anglo-Saxon kings : Maurice, bishop of
London, officiated ; the ritual was observed in all its points,
and the oath which Saint Dunstan had penned as the security
of the nation’s rights sworn upon the Gospel-book by the
accepted sovereign. All the Baronage of the land who were
present took the oath of fealty, and became the King’s men.
And lastly, the Great Charter was engrossed and sealed, and
for ultimate deposit in the treasuries of the Abbeys and
Cathedrals scores of copies, or rather originals, were made —
a busy time for the Chancery clerks— of this title-deed of the
people’s liberties.

But now the question will be asked, In what manner were
the people consulted, or did they really assent to the accession
of the Sovereign? The mystery of popular suffrage always
haunts us : no lawyer, no antiquary can be contented unless he
proves or disproves the existence of the principle, — now the
organic principle, and distinguishing characteristic of our
Legislature. Perhaps we all lay too much stress upon this
point. That the English people concurred in raising Henry to
the throne is certain ; and their virtual representation, whether
by the crowds on the Castle Hill at Winchester, or in the pre-
cincts of the Abbey, was the fact upon which the whole of his
reign afforded a perpetual commentary. . . .

But if the English people had not been present by their
representatives when Henry was accepted, they certainly
enjoyed that privilege when the compact was confirmed.
Each and every sheriff rode to his shire, bearing with him the
Charter, sealed with the King’s Great Seal, addressed to all
his lieges, as one community. . . . And the Shire-moot1 was

1 The meeting of the Shire — the county meeting — or assembling of the

328

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

summoned as of yore, the bishop, and the hundreders,1 and
the aldermen,2 and the vavassours,3 and the franklins,4 and the
barons, and the baron’s stewards, and the priest of each parish,
and the reeve5 of each township, and four of the better men
of each township, on behalf of all who could not attend ; and
before them was the Charter expounded and proclaimed.

Thus was the grant accepted by the people, entrusted to
their testimony, and incorporated in their traditions, so that,
though many of the provisions were violated, and some
neglected, the essential import of the Charter was never
forgotten, never obscured. . . .

Substantially, all the remedial provisions of Beauclerc’s
Charter were transferred into Magna Charta ; and, expanded
and expounded by practice, by legislation, and, more than ah,
by the acuteness and dexterity of the lawyers, settled the
ground-plan of our legal constitution. But these provisions
sink into comparative insignificance beside the single para-
graph which restores the law of the Confessor : Legam Edwardi
Regis vobis reddo cum i/lis emendatio?iibus , quibus earn emendavit
pater mens , consilio Baronum suorum .6 Not, as we are wont
to think, merely the details of the ancient Anglo-Saxon
jurisprudence in each particular, the Teutonisms, which wore

representatives of the free men of the county, convoked by the Shire Reeve
or Sheriff.

1 The representatives of the hundred, a division of the Shire supposed to
contain ioo householders.

2 Eldermen — originally the chief county dignity. The Sheriff was only
the aldermads deputy, but since the Danish title of Earl had come in, the
Alderman was a term less esteemed.

3 Vassus vossorum , vassal of vassals, the under-tenant holding of count
or baron, as the count or baron did of the king. It is a French term, which
came in with the Normans, while all the others are English.

4 A small freeholder.

5 The chief magistrate of each town, who acted as the deputy of the
Ealdorman or Earl who governed the county. Both the Shire-reeve and
the Town-reeve derive the latter part of their title, from their power of
summoning the people, Scir-gerefa and Tun-gerefa , were the words at
full-length, and Gerefa was derived, like the German Gi'ciff (Count) from a
term meaning to call, — in modern German, rufeii. — C. M. Y.

6 “ I restore to you the law of King Edward with those emendations
wherewith my father altered it, by the advice of his Barons.” — C. M. Y.

HENRY THE FIRST'S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY. 329

themselves out in England as elsewhere by the general progress
of society, but the solemn and comprehensive declaration that
henceforward, as before, England was to continue England ;
the English nation to retain their integrity, and the nationality
of the kingdom to be preserved.1

HENRY THE FIRST’S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY.

A.D. IIOI — II3S.

{From Hume’s “ History of England. ’ ’)

The policy and prudence of Henry, which, if time had been
allowed for these virtues to produce their full effect, would have
secured him possession of the crown, ran great hazard of being
frustrated by the sudden appearance of Robert. . . . He took
possession without opposition of the Duchy of Normandy,
and immediately made preparations for recovering England, of
which, during his absence, he had, by Henry’s intrigues, been
so unjustly defrauded. The great fame which he had acquired
in the East forwarded his pretensions, and the Norman barons,
sensible of the consequences, expressed the same discontent at
the separation of the Duchy and Kingdom which had appeared
on the accession of William . . . and many of the principal
nobility invited Robert to make an attempt upon England, and
promised, on his landing, to join him with all their forces.
Even the seamen were affected with the general popularity of
his name, and they carried over to him the greater part of a
fleet which had been equipped to oppose his passage.

Henry, in this extremity, began to be apprehensive for his
life, as well as for his crown, and had recourse to the supersti-
tion of the people, in order to oppose their sentiment of justice.
Ele paid diligent court to Anselm, whose sanctity and wisdom
he pretended to revere. . . . And by these caresses and de-
clarations he entirely gained the confidence of the primate,

1 Abridged from chapters i-i^, vol. iv.

A. D.

IIOI

33°

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

whose influence over the people and authority with the barons
were of the utmost service to him in his present situation.
Anselm scrupled not to assure the nobles of the King’s sincerity
in those professions which he made of avoiding the tyrannical
and oppressive government of his father and brother. He
even rode through the ranks of the army, recommended to the
soldiers the defence of their prince, represented the duty of
keeping their oaths of allegiance, and prognosticated to them
the greatest happiness from the government of so wise
and just a sovereign. By this expedient, joined to the influence
of the Earls of Warwick and Millent, of Roger Bigod, Richard
de Redvers, and Robert Fitz-Hamon, powerful barons, who
still adhered to the present government, the army was retained
in the King’s interests, and marched, with seeming union and
firmness, to oppose Robert, who had landed with his forces at
Portsmouth.

The two armies lay in sight of each other for some days
without coming to action ; and both princes being apprehensive
of the event, which would probably be decisive, hearkened the
more willingly to the councils of Anselm and the other great
men who mediated an accommodation between them. After
employing some negotiation it was agreed that Robert should
resign his pretensions to England, and receive in lieu of them
an annual pension of 3,000 marks ; that if either of the princes
died without issue, the other should succeed to his dominions ;
that the adherents of each should be pardoned, and restored to
all their possessions in Normandy or England ; and that neither
Robert nor Henry should thenceforth encourage, receive, or
protect the enemies of the other.

a.d. This treaty, though calculated so much for Henry’s advan-

1102 tage, he was the first to violate. He restored, indeed, the
estates of all Robert’s adherents ; but was secretly determined,
that noblemen so powerful and so ill-affected, who had both
inclination and ability to disturb his government, should not
long remain unmolested in their present opulence and grandeur.
He began with the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was watched for
some time by spies and then indicted on a charge of forty-five
articles. This turbulent nobleman, knowing his own guilt,
as well as the prejudice of his judges and the power of his

HENRY THE FIRST'S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY. 331

prosecutor, bad recourse to arms for his defence. But being
soon suppressed by the activity and address of Henry, he was
banished the kingdom, and his great estate was confiscated.
His ruin involved that of his two brothers . . . and many others
who had distinguished themselves amongst Robert’s adherents.
Even William, earl of Cornwall, son of the Earl of Mortaigne,
the King’s uncle, having given matter of suspicion against him,
lost all the vast acquisitions of his family in England. . . .
Robert, enraged at the fall of his friends, imprudently ventured
to come into England ; and he remonstrated with his brother
in severe terms against this breach of treaty, but met with
so bad a reception, that he began to apprehend danger to his
own liberty, and was glad to purchase an escape by resigning
his pension.

The indiscretion of Robert soon exposed him to more fatal
injuries. This prince, whose bravery and candour procured
him respect while at a distance, had no sooner attained the
possession of power and enjoyment of peace, than all the
vigour of his mind relaxed ; and he fell into contempt among
those who approached his person, or were subject to his
authority. Alternately abandoned to dissolute pleasures, and
to womanish superstition, he was so remiss in the care of his
treasure, and the exercise of his government, that his servants
pillaged his money with impunity, stole from him his very
clothes, and proceeded thence to practise every species of
extortion on his defenceless subjects. The barons, whom a
severe administration could alone have restrained, gave reins
to their unbounded rapine upon their vassals, and inveterate
animosities against each other ; and all Normandy, during the
reign of this benign prince, was become a scene of violence
and depredation.

The Normans, at last, observing the regular government
which Henry, notwithstanding his usurped title, had been able
to establish in England, applied to him, that he might use his
authority for the suppression of these disorders, and they there-
by afforded him a pretence for interposing in the affairs of
Normandy. Instead of employing his mediation to render his
brother’s government respectable, or to redeem the grievances
of the Normans, he was only attentive to support his own

332

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

partisans, and to increase their number by every act of bribery,
intrigue, and insinuation.

Having, found, in a visit which he made to that Duchy, that
the nobility were more disposed to pay submission to him
than to their actual sovereign, he collected, by arbitrary ex-

A. d. tortion on England, a great army and treasure, and returned

1105 next year to Normandy, in a situation to obtain, either by
violence or corruption, the dominion of that province. He
took Bayeux by storm after an obstinate siege ; he made him-
self master of Caen by the voluntary submission of the
inhabitants ; but being repulsed at Falaise, and obliged by the
winter season to raise the siege, he returned into England, after
giving assurances to his adherents that he would persevere in i
supporting and protecting them.

1106 Next year he opened the campaign with the siege of Ten-
chebray, and it became evident, from his preparations and
progress, that he intended to usurp the entire possession of
Normandy. Robert was at last roused from his lethargy, and
being supported by the Earl of Mortagne and Robert de
Bellesme, the King’s inveterate enemies, he raised a con-
siderable army, and approached his brother’s camp, with a
view of finishing, in one decisive battle, the quarrel between
them. He was now entered on that scene of action in which
alone he was qualified to excel, and he so animated his troops
by his example that they threw the English into disorder, and
had nearly obtained the victory, when the flight of Bellesme ;
spread a panic among the Normans, and occasioned their total 1
defeat. Henry, besides doing great execution on the enemy,
made near ten thousand prisoners, among whom was Duke
Robert himself, and all the most considerable barons who
adhered to his interests. This victory was followed by the
final reduction of Normandy ; Rouen immediately submitted
to the conqueror; Falaise, after some negotiation, opened
its gates ; and, by this acquisition, besides rendering himself
master of an important fortress, he got into his hands Prince
William, the only son of Robert. He assembled the States of
Normandy ; and having received the homage of the vassals of
the Duchy, having settled the government, revoked his brothers
donations, and dismantled the castles lately built, he returned

HENRY THE FIRSTS CONQUEST OF NORMANDY. 333

into England, and carried along with him the Duke as prisoner.
That unfortunate prince was detained in custody during the
remainder of his life, which was no less than twenty-eight
years, and he died in the castle of Cardiff, in Glamorganshire :
happy if, without losing his liberty, he could have relinquished
that power which he was not qualified either to hold or
exercise. Prince William was committed to the care of Helie
de St. Saen, who had married Robert’s natural daughter, and
who being a man of probity and honour beyond what was usual
in those ages, executed the trust with great affection and
fidelity. Edgar Atheling, who had followed Robert in the
expedition to Jerusalem, and who had lived with him ever
since in Normandy, was another illustrious prisoner taken in
the battle of Tenchebray. Henry gave him his liberty, and
settled a small pension on him, with which he retired, and he
lived to a good old age in England, totally neglected and
forgotten.

The acquisition of Normandy was a great point of Henry’s
ambition ; being the ancient patrimony of his family, and the
only territory which, while in his possession, gave him any
weight or consideration on the continent : but the injustice of
his usurpation was the source of great inquietude, involved him
in frequent wars, and obliged him to impose on his English
subjects those very heavy and arbitrary taxes, of which all the
historians of that age unanimously complain. His nephew
William was but six years of age, when he committed him to
the care of Helie de St. Saen; and it is probable that his
reason for entrusting that important charge to a man of so
unblemished a character was to prevent all malignant sus-
picions in case any accident should befall the life of the young
prince. He soon repented of his choice; but when he desired
to recover possession of William’s person, Helie withdrew his
pupil, and carried him to the court of bulk, count of Anjou,
who gave him protection. In proportion as the prince grew
up to man’s estate, he discovered virtues becoming his birtn ;
and wandering through different courts of Europe, he excited
the friendly compassion of many princes, and raised a general
indignation against his uncle, who had so unjustly bereaved
him of his inheritance. Lewis the Gross, son of Philip, was at

334

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

this time King of France, a brave and generous prince, who
having been obliged, during the lifetime of his father, to fly into
England in order to escape the persecutions of his stepmother
Bertrude, had been protected by Henry, and had thence con- 1
ceived a personal friendship for him. But these ties were soon
dissolved after the accession of Lewis, who found his interests
to be in so many particulars opposite to those of the English
monarch, and who became sensible of the danger attending the
annexation of Normandy to England. He joined, therefore,
the Counts of Anjou and Flanders in giving disquiet to Henry’s
government ; and this monarch, in order to defend his foreign
dominions, found himself obliged to go over to Normandy,
where he resided two years. The war which ensued among
those princes, was attended with no memorable event, and :
produced only slight skirmishes on the frontiers, agreeably to
the weak condition of the sovereigns in that age whenever
their subjects were not roused by some great and urgent occa- :
sion. Henry, by contracting his eldest son William to the
daughter of Fulk, detached that prince from the alliance, and 1
obliged the others to come to an accommodation with him.
This peace was not of long duration. His nephew William
retired to the court of Baldwin, earl of Flanders, who espoused
his cause ; and the King of France having soon after for other
reasons joined the party, a new war was kindled in Normandy,
which produced no event more memorable than had attended
the former. At last the death of Baldwin, who was slain in
an action near Eu, gave some respite to Henry, and enabled
him to carry on war with more advantage against his enemies.

Lewis, finding himself unable to wrest Normandy from the
King by force of arms, had recourse to the dangerous expe-
dient of applying to the spiritual power, and of affording the
ecclesiastics a pretence to interpose in the temporal concerns
of princes. He carried young William to a general council,
which was assembled at Rheims by Pope Calixtus II., pre-
sented the Norman prince to him, complained of the manifest
usurpation and injustice of Henry, craved the assistance of the
Church for reinstating the true heir in his dominions, and
represented the enormity of detaining in captivity so brave a
prince as Robert, one of the most eminent champions of the

HENRY THE FIRST'S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY. 335

Cross, and who, by that very quality, was placed under the
immediate protection of the Holy See. Henry knew how to
defend the rights of his crown with vigour, and yet with dex-
terity. He had sent over the English bishops to this synod,
but at the same time had warned them that if any farther
claims were stated by the Pope or the ecclesiastics, he was de-
termined to adhere to the laws and customs of England, and
maintain the prerogatives transmitted to him by his prede-
cessors. “ Go,” said he to them, “ salute the Pope in my
name ; hear his apostolical precepts ; but take care to bring
none of his new inventions into my kingdom.” Finding, how-
ever, that it would be easier for him to elude than to oppose
the efforts of Calixtus, he gave his ambassadors orders to gain
the Pope and his favourites by liberal presents and promises.
The complaints of the Norman prince were thenceforth heard
with great coldness by the council ; and Calixtus confessed,
after a conference which he had the same summer with Henry,
and when that prince probably renewed his presents, that, of
all men whom he had ever yet been acquainted with, he was
beyond comparison the most eloquent and persuasive.

The warlike measures of Lewis proved as ineffectual as his
intrigues. He had laid a scheme for surprising Noyon ; but
Henry having received intelligence of the design, marched to
the relief of the place, and suddenly attacked the French at
Brenneville, as they were advancing towards it. A sharp con-
flict ensued, where Prince William behaved with great bravery,
and the King himself was in most imminent danger. He was
wounded in the head by Crispin, a gallant Norman officer who
had followed the fortunes of William ; but being rather animated
than terrified by the blow, he immediately beat his antagonist
to the ground, and so encouraged his troops by the example,
that they put the French to total rout, and had very nearly
taken their King prisoner. The dignity of the persons engaged
in this skirmish rendered it the most memorable action of the
war, for in other respects it was not of great importance.
There were nine hundred horsemen who fought on both sides,
yet were there only two persons slain. The rest were defended
by that heavy armour worn by the cavalry in those times. An
accommodation soon after ensued between the Kings of Prance

336

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

A - V.
1120

and England, and the interests of young William were entirely
neglected in it.

But this public prosperity of Henry was much overbalanced
by a domestic calamity which befel him. His only son William
had now reached his eighteenth year ; and the King, from the
facility with which he himself had usurped the crown, dreading
that a like resolution might subvert his family, had taken care
to have him recognised successor by the states of the kingdom,
and had carried him over to Normandy, that he might receive
the homage of the barons of that duchy. The King, on his
return, set sail from Barfleur, and was soon carried by a fair ;
wind out of sight of land. The Prince was detained by some
accident; and his sailors, as well as their captain, Thomas Fitz-
Stephens, having spent the interval in drinking, were so flus- ij.
tered, that being in a hurry to follow the King, they heedlessly i
carried the ship on a rock, where she immediately foundered. 'j
William was put into the long boat, and had got clear of the I
ship, when, hearing the cries of his natural sister, the Countess
of Perche, he ordered the seamen to row back in hopes of
saving her ; but the numbers who then crowded in soon sunk
the boat, and the Prince with all his retinue. Above a hundred '
and forty young noblemen of the principal families of England
and Normandy were lost on this occasion. A butcher of Rouen |
was the only person on board who escaped ; he clung to the
mast, and was taken up next morning by fishermen. Fitz-
Stephens also took hold of the mast, but being informed by the
butcher that Prince William had perished, he said that he would
not survive the disaster, and he threw himself headlong into the
sea. Henry entertained hopes for three days that his son had
put into some distant port of England ; but when certain intelli-
gence of the calamity was brought him he fainted away, and it
was remarked that he never after was seen to smile, nor ever
recovered his wonted cheerfulness.

The death of William may be regarded, in one respect, as
a misfortune to the English, because it was the immediate
source of those civil wars which, after the demise of the King,
caused such confusion in the kingdom ; but it is remarkable
that the young Prince had entertained a violent aversion to the
natives, and had been heard to threaten that when he should

337

HENRY THE FIRSTS CONQUEST OF NORMANDY.

be king he should make them draw the plough, and would turn
them into beasts of burthen. These prepossessions he inherited
from his father, who, though he was wont, when it might serve
his purpose, to value himself on his birth as a native of Eng-
land, showed, in the course of his government, an extreme
prejudice, against that people. All hopes of preferment, to
ecclesiastical as well as the civil dignities, were denied them
during this whole reign, and any foreigner, however ignorant or
worthless, was sure to have the preference in every competi-
tion. As the English had given no disturbance to the Govern-
ment during the course of fifty years, this inveterate antipathy
in a prince of so much temper as well as penetration, forms
presumption that the English of that age were still a rude
and barbarous people even compared to the Normans, and
impresses us with no very favourable idea of the Anglo-Saxon
manners.

Prince William left no children, and the king had not now
any legitimate issue, except one daughter, Matilda, whom, in
mo, he had betrothed, though only eight years of age, to the
Emperor Henry V. and whom he had then sent over to be
educated in Germany. But as her absence from the kingdom,
and her marriage into a foreign family might endanger the suc-
cession, Henry, who was now a widower, was induced to marry,
in hopes of having male heirs ; and he made his addresses to
Adelais, daughter of Godfrey, duke of Louvaine, and niece of
Pope Calixtus, a young princess of an amiable person. But A. d.
Adelais brought him no children ; and the prince, who was x 1 2 r
most likely to dispute the succession, and even the immediate
possession of the crown, recovered hopes of subverting his
rival, who had successively seized all his patrimonial dominions.
William, the son of Duke Robert, was still protected in the
French Court, and as Henry’s connexions with the Count of
Anjou were broken off by the death of his son, Fulk joined
the party of the unfortunate prince, gave him his daughter in
marriage, and aided him in raising disturbances in Normandy.

But Henry found the means of drawing off the Count of Anjou
by forming anew with him a nearer connexion than the former,
and one more material to the interests of that count’s family. 1127
The emperor, his son-in-law, dying without issue, he bestowed

338

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

his daughter on Geoffrey, the eldest son of Fulk,and endeavoured
to ensure her succession by having her recognised heir to all his
dominions, and obliging the barons both of Normandy and
England to swear fealty to her. He hoped that the choice of
this husband would be more agreeable to all his subjects than
that of the Emperor ; and securing them from the danger of
falling under the dominion of a great and distant potentate,
who might bring them into subjection, and reduce their
country to the rank of a province. But the barons were
displeased, that a step so material to national interests had
been taken without consulting them ; and Henry had too
sensibly experienced the turbulence of their dispositions, not to
dread the effects of their resentment.

It seemed probable that his nephew’s party might gain force
from the increase of the malcontents,— an accession of power
which that prince acquired a little after, tended to render his
pretensions still more dangerous. Charles, earl of Flanders,
being assassinated during the celebration of divine service,
King Louis immediately put the young prince in possession of
that country to which he had pretensions in the right of his
grandmother Matilda, wife to the Conqueror. But William
survived a very little time this piece of good fortune, which
seemed to open the way to still farther prosperity. He was
killed in a skirmish with the Landgrave of Alsace, competitor
for Flanders ; and his death put an end, for the present, to the
jealousy and inquietude of Henry.

The chief merit of this monarch’s government consists in the
profound tranquillity which he established and maintained
throughout all his dominions during the greater part of his
reign. The mutinous barons were retained in subjection; and
his neighbours, in every attempt which they made upon him,
found him so well prepared that they were discouraged from
continuing or renewing their enterprises. In order to repress
the incursions of the Welsh, he brought over some Flemings,
in the*year mi, and settled them in Pembrokeshire, where
they long maintained a different language, and customs, and
manners from their neighbours. Though his government
seems to have been arbitrary in England, it was judicious and
prudent, and was as little oppressive as the necessity of his

339

HENRY THE FIRST'S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY.

affairs would permit. . He wanted not attention to the redress
of grievances ; and historians mention in particular the levying
of purveyance, which he endeavoured to moderate and restrain.

The tenants in the King’s demesne lands were at that time
obliged to supply gratis the court with provisions, and to
furnish carriages on the same hard terms when the King
made a progress, as he did frequently, into any of the counties.
These exactions were so grievous, and levied in so licentious a
manner, that the farmers, when they heard of the approach of
the court, often deserted their houses as if an enemy had
invaded the country, and sheltered their persons and families
in the woods from the insults oi the King’s retinue. Henry
prohibited those enormities, and punished the persons guilty of
them by cutting off their hands, legs, or other members. But
the prerogative was perpetual ; the remedy applied by Henry
was temporary ; and the violence itself of this remedy, so far
from giving security to the people, was only a proof of the
ferocity of the Government, and threatened a quick return of
like abuses. . . .

As everything in England remained in tranquillity, Henry a. i>.
took the opportunity of paying a visit to Normandy, to which 1131
he was invited as well by his affection for that country as by
his tenderness for his daughter, the Empress Matilda, who was
always his favourite. Some time after that princess was de- 1132
livered of a son, who received the name of Henry ; and the
King, farther to ensure her succession, made all the nobility of
England and Normandy renew the oath of fealty which they
had already sworn to her. The joy of this event, and the
satisfaction which he reaped from his daughter’s company, who
bore successively two other sons, made his residence in Nor-
mandy very agreeable to him, and he seemed determined to
pass the remainder of his days in that country, when an incur-
sion of the Welsh obliged him to think of returning into England.

He was preparing for the journey, but was seized with a sudden 1135
illness at St. Dennis le Torment, from eating too plentifully of
lampreys, a food which always agreed better with his palate
than his constitution. He died in the sixty-seventh year of his
age. and the thirty-fifth of his reign, leaving by will his daughter
Matilda heir of all his dominions, without making any mention

z 2

340

HIS T ORICA L SELECTIONS .

of her husband Geoffrey, who had given him several causes of
displeasure.

This prince was one of the most accomplished that has filled j
‘the English throne, and possessed all the great qualities both
of body and mind, natural and acquired, which could fit him
for the high station to which he attained. His person was manly,
his countenance engaging, his eyes clear, serene, and pene- j
trating. The affability of his address encouraged those who
might be overawed by the sense of his dignity, or of his wis-
dom ; and though he often indulged his facetious humour, he !
knew how to temper it with discretion, and ever kept at a dis-
tance from all indecent familiarities with the courtiers. His
superior eloquence and judgment would have given him an
ascendant even had he been born in a private station, and his j
personal bravery would have procured him respect, though it
had been less supported by art and policy. By his great pro-
gress in literature he acquired the name of Beau-clerc , or the
Scholar ; but his application to those sedentary pursuits abated
nothing of the activity and vigilance of his government ; and
though the learning of that age was better fitted to corrupt
than improve the understanding, his natural good sense pre- I
served itself untainted, both from the pedantry and superstition
which were then so prevalent among men of letters. His
temper was susceptible of the sentiments as well of friendship
as of resentment; and his ambition, though high, might be
deemed moderate and reasonable, had not his conduct towards '
his brother and nephew showed that he was too much disposed
to sacrifice to it all the maxims of justice and equity. But the
total incapacity of Robert for government afforded his younger
brother a reason or pretence for seizing the sceptre both of
England and Normandy; and when violence and usurpation
are once begun, necessity obliges a prince to continue in the
same criminal course, and engages him in measures which his
better judgment and sounder principles would otherwise have
induced him to reject with warmth and indignation.1

1 Abridged from chap. vi. vol. i. (ed. 1813).

34i

REIGN OF STEPHEN.

. a. d. 1135— 1154.

{From Fabyan’s “ Chronicles .” *)

Stephen, earl of Boloyne (Boulogne), and son of the Earl A-D
of Blesence (Blois), and of the wive’s sister of Henry the IX36
First, named Mary, began his reign over the realm of Eng-
ionde (England) in the year of our Lord 1136, 2 and the first
year of Luois VIII. of that name, then king of Fraimce. This
was a noble man and hardy ; but contrary to his oath, after the
affirmance of some writers, that he made to Molde (Maude),
the Empress, he took upon him the crown, and was crowned
upon Saint Stephen’s day, in the Christmas week, at West-
minster, of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; the which in like-
wise had made like oath unto the said Empress, in presence of
her father, as before is touched. In punishment whereof, as
men deemed, the said archbishop died shortly after, and many
other lords, which died accordingly, went not quite without
punishment. A great causer of this perjury, as rehearseth one
author, was this : one Hugh Bygot, steward sometime with
Henry the First, immediately after the decease of the said
Henry, came unto England, and before the said archbishop and
other lords of the land, took wilfully an oath, and sware that
he was present a little before the King’s death, when King
Henry admitted, and chose for his heir to be king after him,
Stephen his nephew, for so much as Molde his daughter had
discontented him, whereunto the archbishop with the other
lords gave too hasty credence ; but this Hugh escaped not
unpunished, for he died miserably in a short time after. When
King Stephen was crowned, he sware before the lords at Oxen-

1 Robert Fabyan was an alderman of London in the fifteenth century.

His orthography has been modernized. — E. M. S.

2 Reckoning his reign as beginning the week after his coronation.

E. M. S.

342

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS .

ford (Oxford), that he would not hold in his hand the benefices
that voided (became vacant), and that he would forgive the
Danegelt, as King Henry before him had done, with other things
which I pass over. And for this Stephen dreaded the coming
of the Empress, he therefore gave licence unto his lords that
every one of them might build a castle or strong fortress upon
his own ground, and soon after he agreed with Davyd (David),
king of Scottys (Scotland), and received of him homage, after
he had from him won some towns and holds. The town of
Exetour (Exeter) rebelled against the King in the second
year of his reign ; but he in the end subdued them : and
Wyllyam, archbishop of Canterbury, died the same year, whose
d. benefice was after given to Thebaude (Theobald), abbot of
39 Becco (Bee), in Normandy. About the fourth year of his reign,
Davyd, king of Scotland, repenting him of his former agree-
ment made with the King, entered of new the bounds of
Northumberland, about the river of Theyse (Tees), towards
the province of York, and burnt and slew the people in most
cruel wise, not sparing man, woman, nor child. Again whom
Thurston, by the King’s commandment, was sent, the which
with his power acquitted him so knightly, that he overthrew
the host of Scots, and slew of them great number, and com-
pelled them to withdraw again into Scotland. In the which
(pass-time) the King laid siege to the castle of Bedford and
won it ; and that done, he then made a voyage into Scotland,
where he did little to his pleasure or profit. Then in his return
homeward he took Alexander, bishop of Lyncolne (Lincoln),
and held him in duresse till he had yielded or given to him
the castle of Newerke (Newark), and then he chased Nigellus
(Nigel), bishop of Ely. . . .

One chronicle saith, that King Stephan obtained these fore-
said castles to the intent that he might fortify them with his
knights, to withstand the Empress, whose coming he ever
feared : and the year following he won with strength, the
castles of Glowcetour (Gloucester), of Hereford e, of Weobley,
(Webley), of Bristowe (Bristol), of Dudley, and of Shrewesbury ;
for the which cause Robert, earl of Gloucester, began to with-
draw his allegiance from King Stephan. This Robert was the
bastard son of Henry the First, and for this displeasure sent

REIGN OF STEPHEN.

343

letters unto Molde the Empress, his sister, promising to her
great aid to win her right. In the meanwhile that the Empress
made provision for her journey, King Stephan concluded a
marriage between Eustace his son, and Constance, the King’s
sister, of Fraunce, daughter of Lewys (Louis) the Great, the
which continued the amity between Englonde and Fraunce
(France). Then in the month of Jiulii (July), and sixth year of
Stephan, Molde the empress, as testifieth Fiery the Canon
in his ninth book, entered this land by the port of Ports-
mouthe, and so kept on her journey till she came to Bristowe,
and did great harm by the means of her passage through the
country. In which time of her said landing, King Stephan lay
at the seige of Walyngforde (Wallingford) Castle ; but as soon
as he heard of the landing of the Empress, he anon sent out
commissions for more strength, and so drew towards his enemies.

But in this time and season, Robert, earl of Glowcestour and
Ranulfe, earl of Chester, went unto the Empress with all the a.d.
power that they might make. The Empress hearing of the 114
great power coming with the King, withdrew to the city of
Nicoll, now called Lincoln, and there held her a long season,
for all that the King might do ; but lastly the Empress with
her people escaped, and the King was possessed of the city,
and there bode till Candlemas. After which season Earl Robert,
and Ranulf, before named, with a great power of Welshmen,
and power of the Empress, came against the King : where as
when both hosts were near the joining, earl Ranulf of Chester
spake to his knights, and said, “ I require you that I, that am
cause of your peril, may be the first that shall enter unto the
peril.” Then answered Earl Robert, and said, “it is not un-
worthy to thee that askest the first stroke and dignity of this
fight, for to thee it is fitting for nobleness of blood and virtue of
strength, in the which thou passest other men ; but the King’s
false oath moveth men to war and to fight, where we must now
win the mastery or be overcome : and he that hath none other
succour, is constrained to defend him by knightly and strong
deeds of arms, and of manhood : and so shall we now against
them that be entricked with guile and wickedness, as Robert,
earl of Mellent, the earl also of Albemarl, and Simon of Hapton
(Hampton), the which is a man of great boast and of small

344

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

might.” Then King Stephan prepared to set forward his people,
and Earl Baudewyne (Baldwin), had words of comfort to the
King’s people, and said : “ men that shall fight, to them is be-
hovefull three things : the first is right of the cause, lest men fall
in peril of soul ; the second is quantity of men of arms, lest men
be oppressed with exceeding number; and the third is the
effect courage of strength of knights, that the quarrel should
not fail, for lack of hardy and assured fighting : as touching
which three points, I trust we be well sped. But and ye take
heed farthermore what enemies we have : first we have against
us Robert, earl of Glowcetor which useth great menaces and
executeth little, or small deeds ; in mouth, he is a lion, but in
heart he is a sheep ; he is pompous in speech, and dark in
understanding. There is also Ranulf, earl of Chester, a man
without reason, and full of foolhardiness, ready and prest to
all conspiracy, and unsteadfastness of manner, and deeds hasty ;
and furious of heart, and unwary of perils, he essayeth oft, to
achieve great deeds, but he bringeth none to effect ; and what
he fiercely and freshly beginneth, he cowardly and faintly for-
sake th, as unhappy and ungracious in all his deeds ; and is
overcome in every place, for he holdeth with him banished men
and scullers, and the more of them that be in a company, the
sooner they be overcome, and weak they be in fighting, for
either of them putteth trust in his fellow, while himself is over-
thrown.” But before he might have fully finished his words
to most men’s audience, the cry of the enemies, with noise
of trumpets, and grunting of horses, approached and smote
together, and forth went the arrows, and grisly and cruel fight
was continued upon both sides, for the while that it endured ;
where through the green field was turned into a perfect red, so
that many a pale and wan visage was there seen yielding the
ghost, with arms and legs dissevered and parted. A long
while this fight stood in question, whether party should obtain
victory ; but in the end King Stephan’s party gave back, and
fled, and he full knightly abode on the field with a few of his
knights, and was taken, and so was brought unto the Empress,
the which commanded him to be conveyed under sure keeping,
unto Bristowe, where he was kept as a prisoner from the said
time of Candlemas, unto Holy Rood day next ensuing, , . ,

REIGN OF STEPHEN 345

When the Empress had won this victory, and had committed
the King to ward, as before ye have heard, she was not there-
with a little exalted, but thought in her mind, that she was in a
surety of the possession of the whole realm ; but she was de-
ceived, for Kent took part with King Stephan. But yet after
this victory thus obtained, the Empress came unto Winchester
and after to Wilton, to Oxynforde (Oxford), to Redynge (Read-
ing), and to S. Albonys (St. Alban’s) ; into the which cities and
towns she was received with all honour, and finally she came to
London, for to enter the state of the land. At her, which there
being, the Queen made assiduous labour for the deliverance of
the King her husband, promising that he should surrender the
land into her possession, and he to become a religious man,
otherelse a pilgrim to his live’s end ; but all was in vain, for
she might purchase no grace as then, upon no manner of con-
dition. The citizens of London also made great labour that
they might use the laws of Edward the Confessor, as they were
granted by Wyllyam Coquerour (Conqueror), and not the laws
of her father, which were of more straitness, whereof in no
wise they of her council might have any grant. For this the
citizens were discontented, and knowing that the country of
Kent would strengthen their party, ordained to have taken
her ; but she being thereof warned, departed in haste, and left
behind her her store of household, and so fled unto Oxynford,
where she abode her people, the which was divided and
scattered. And in this while, she sent unto Davyd, king of
Scottys, and her uncle, for to aid her ; the which, in all haste,
came unto her, and so rode to Winchester, where she laid siege
to the bishop’s tower, the which the King’s brother at that time
held with strength. Then the Queen, with aid of her friends
of Kentishmen, and other, made a strong host, whereof was
captain a knight named Guyllya (Guillaume) de Pre. When
the Empress heard of the great strength of the Queen, and
saw that her own minished rather than increased, she fled
secretly, and escaped unto Glowcetour, and Earl Robert, her
brother, was taken soon after and put in prison. Then Davyd,
king of Scots, hearing of this, returned into Scotlonde. Then
means was made, upon either side, for delivery and exchange
of the prisoners, so that finally it was agreed that the King

346

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

should be delivered for Earl Robert ; but or this agreement
were concluded, much sorrow was wrought within this realm,
for the Empress pillaged and spoiled on her part, and the
Queen, by promises and menaces, borrowed and took upon the
other side, and the soldiers stole and extortioned upon both
parts, so that rich men were made needy, and the poor were
oppressed. In this meanwhile the Empress returned again
to Oxynforde, and victualled and manned it in her best manner. I
Then lastly the King was delivered upon Holy Rood day in :
harvest, and soon after he beclepyed (beleagured) Oxford with
a strong siege from the time of Myghelmas (Michaelmas) unto
the season of Cristemas (Christmas), at which time and season,

a.d. the Empress used a new guile for constraint, and necessity

1142 of victual. In that time was great plenty of snow fallen upon
the ground, and the frost was therewith so greaf, that Thamys
(Thames), with other great rivers, were then frozen over, so
that man and horse might pass the water upon the ice. The
Empress, then constrained of need, as before is said, appa-
relled her and her company in white clothing, which afar off
appeared like the snow, and so upon a plumpe going together,
as near as they might, escaped the danger of their foes, and so
came to Walyngeforde, and thence in process of time, she with
a small company departed, and returned finally into Normandy
unto her husband.

1146 So soon as the Empress was thus departed from Oxynforde,
the town was yielded unto the King, where the King had
much of the Empress’ stuff, as well harness, as other stuff of
household. Then he intended to have pursued her, but tidings
were brought unto him that Ranulf, earl of Chester, with an host
of Walshemen (Welshmen), was coming toward him; but by
mediation of friends, this Ranulf, in the end, to the King
was reconciled, and was with him agreed. . . .

In the sixteenth year, Ranulf, earl of Chester^ died, that was
surnamed Gercyous, and was the fourth Earl after the conquest,
and his son Hugh was Earl after him, which was a man of great
strength and virtue. And in the same year, as witnesseth Guydo
and other, died Geoffrey Plantagenet, husband of Molde, the
Empress ; after whose death, Henry Short Matell (Curtmantle),
that was the son of the said Geoffrey and Molde, was made

REIGN OF STEPHEN

347

Duke of Angeous (Anjou), and of Normandy; the which, in
few years after, married Elyanoure (Eleanor), the daughter of
the Earl of Paytowe (Poitou) ; the which Eleanor was before
married unto Lewis, king of Fraunce, and from him divorced
for nearness of blood, when he had received of her two
daughters, named Mary and Alys (Alice), as witnesseth the
French chronicle. And so this Henry was earl of Angeous by
his father, duke of Normandy by his mother, and earl of
Poytowe by his wife. It was not long after that Eustace, the
son of King Stephan, with aid of the French King, warred upon
Henry duke of Normandy ; the which, after some writers, was
imagined by Stephan his father, to the intent to let or stop him,
that he should not come into Englonde to claim his inheritance ;
but Duke Henry defeated him so knightly that the said Eustace
won thereby little honour or profit. An old chronicle showeth
that King Stephan intended to have crowned the said Eustace
his son King of England by his days, but the bishops of
Englonde refused the deed by commandment of the Pope.

In the seventeenth year, the King laid siege unto the castles
of Newebery, of Walyngeforde, and of Warwyke, or Warwell ;
the which had been kept by the Empress’ friends, from the
time of her departing unto that day, and hoped of rescues by
Henry duke of Normandy But the King then won the castles
of Newebery and of Warwell, and Walyngeforde defended the
holders till the . coming of Henry the Duke ; the which in the
end of the said year, with a great army entered Englonde,
and first won the castle of Malmysbury, and thence he rode
to London and won the Tower, as much by policy and by fair
promise as by strength, and such stuff of victual and armour
as he found therein, he sent to Walyngeforde ; and that done,
he went to the town of Walyngeforde, and won such holds as
were there about. Then King Stephan with his power drew
toward the Duke, and finally by means of mediators, as
Thibawde, archbishop of Canterbury, and other, both princes,
to commune of peace, met near unto the water of Urne ;
but as fast as some laboured to have peace, so fast other
laboured to have war, so that at that communication the peace
was not concluded.

After the King and the Duke were departed, the King rode

34^

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

toward Epyswich (Ipswich), in Suffolke, and the Duke took the
way to Shrewsbury, where he won the castle of the said town ;
from thence the King went to Nothyngham (Nottingham),
and won the town. Wherefore the soldiers that held the castle,
seeing that the town took part with the Duke, brake out upon
a.d. the night and fired the town, and burnt a great part thereof.
e 1 53 In this while died and was drowned Eustace, the son of King
Stephan, and was buried at Feuersham (Feversliam), in Kent,
in the abbey that his father before had builded. Thibawde,
archbishop of Canterbury, left not to labour, and concluded
the peace atween the King and the Duke, and endeavoured
himself therein so diligently, with the assistance of other, that
in the year following, the peace was concluded upon diverse
conditions ; whereof one was that the King should continue as
King during his life, and immediately after the conclusion of
this peace, the said Henry should be proclaimed in all the
chief cities and towns of England for heir parent, and to
be king after the death of the said Stephan, and that the
King should take him for his son of adoption, and rightful
heir unto the crown. To the which covenant justly to be
holden, the King was first sworn, and after his lords spiritual
and temporal, and so rode both to London, where they were
royally received ; and when the King had feasted the Duke,
and given to him rich gifts, he took leave of the King, and
so returned into Normandy, as affirm eth the aforesaid author,
the Flower of Histories.

Howbeit the chronicle of Englonde saith, that the accord
was made upon division of the land atwene them : that is
to mean that both should reign together, and either of them
to enjoy half the land ; but how that division was made, or
which part of the land each of them should hold, no mention
thereof is made, and the former accord should be as above
is said, concluded eight days following the Epiphany of our
1154 Lord, in the town of Oxynforde, and the King died in the month
of October following, when he had reigned eighteen years full,
and odd months, and was interred in the aforesaid abbey ol
Feuersham.

This King Stephan, at the request of Molde his wife, builded,
in the year of grace, 1140, the abbey of Coggeshale, in Essex,

DAVID OF SCOTLAND. 349

and set therein white monks; also about the same time, he
founded the abbey of Feuersham, in Kent, where he now
corporally resteth : and the third he founded in Furness, in
Lacasshyre (Lancashire), and all he furnished with monks of
Cysteaux (Cistercian) order, and died, as before is said, without
issue of his body.1

DAVID OF SCOTLAND AND THE BATTLE OF
THE STANDARD.

A. D. II38.

(From u Lives of the Fnglish Saints!)

After the death of Margaret and Malcolm Canmore, for five
years, war and rapine ravaged Scotland, and usurpers wore its
crown ; but at length it pleased God to restore Edgar, the eldest
surviving son of Margaret, to the throne. He was a mild and
amiable prince, and the weary land had peace in his days.
After him came a remarkable prince, Alexander, surnamed
the Fierce ; and need he had of fierceness, for he had to rule
an unruly kingdom, and by main force to keep in awe his
rebellious nobles. But fierce as he was to them, he was mild
and beneficent to the clergy, whom he loved for his sainted
mother’s sake. St. Andrews for a long time was the only fixed
Scottish see, and its bishop was called the Bishop of the Scots,
as the prelate of Whiterne was the Bishop of the Piets. To
this see King Alexander added Glasgow, and perhaps also
Elgin, or at least he revived them, and took care to appoint to
these sees men of learning and piety.

But the throne of a Scottish diocese was by no means an
easy seat. Turgot, whom Alexander early in his reign appointed
to the see of St. Andrews, went back to his cloister of Durham,
for his heart sunk within him at the difficulties which surrounded
him. Eadmer, too, the companion of St. Anselm, was elected
to the same see, but the very next year he came back to

1 Abridged from chap, ccxxxii.

35°

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

Canterbury, for it was better to be a simple monk of St. Benedict
than to bear the weary crozier of St. Andrews. Again, John,
the new Bishop of Glasgow, fairly ran away to Rome, and from
thence to the Holy Land, and could only be brought back but
by an express command of the Holy See. One part of their
difficulty was doubtless their difference with the Archbishop of
York, who claimed canonical jurisdiction over them, but the
chief obstacles lay in their unruly clergy, the degenerate Culdees. ;;
Alexander, however, determined to remedy this evil ; monas- ||
ticism was reviving in the north of England, and wherever a
new monastery was established, or an old one revived, there
were the head-quarters of religion, and the monks became the
instructors of a people whom the mere pressure of desolation
had stupefied and brutalized. The example of Durham had ji
given him a precedent for the expulsion of the secularized
Culdees, and he substituted regular canons for them at j
St. Andrews. J

. . . He restored to the prior and canons of St. Andrew’s i
the lands which had been taken away from the church : and the
quaint style in which the act of restoration was effected is a
specimen of the state of things in Scotland. In the cathedral
of St. Andrew’s all the nobles of the realm were assembled ; ;
and with them Robert, the newly elected bishop, formerly prior
of Scone, and the new canons of the convent, their shaven
crowns, and ecclesiastical habit mingling strangely with the
bright armour of the Lowland nobles, and the waving plaid of
the chieftains of the Gael. In the midst of this assembly there
was led up to the high altar Alexander’s Arabian war-horse,
saddled and bridled, and splendidly caparisoned, with the
King’s shield fastened to his back, and a silver lance, which
afterwards became the shaft of the crucifix of the Church. By
this strange charter, the lands were delivered to the monks,
and the transaction was duly impressed upon the witnesses.
Besides which he built the abbey of the Holy Trinity at Scone,
the ancient seat of Scottish royalty, and the monastery of St.
Columba, in the little island of Inchcolm, in the Frith of Forth ;
and any one who has been on Loch Tay will remember the
green islet where a monastery was erected over the grave of
his wife Sybilla.

DA VID OF SCOTLAND.

351

It was in the year 1124 that Alexander died, shortly after he A. D.
had conferred the lands on the church of St. Andrew’s. His 1124
brother David thus found himself in possession of an unenvi-
able throne, for Alexander died childless. He endeavoured to
avoid the dangerous honour ; and, indeed, he had few tempta-
tions to quit the court of England, where he was honoured as
the first of English nobles. Henry had loved him for the
cheerful and warm-hearted disposition which he had inherited
from his sainted mother. He had been knighted by the King’s
own hand, and was a general favourite with the whole court.

He yielded, however, to the persuasion of the bishops, and was
crowned. It was of the utmost consequence to Henry, that in
the event of a disputed succession, which was likely, Scotland
should be in the hands of one bound to the line of St. Edward
(Edward the Confessor) by so many ties ; and he, too, probably
urged David to accept the throne. David did not find his
kingdom so hard to rule as he had imagined. What his
brother, with all his fierceness, could keep only at the cost of
much labour and blood, he ruled in peace by his meekness
and charity. He managed to reconcile, at least to keep in
order, the two discordant elements of his kingdom, — the old
patriarchal chieftains of the plaided clans, and the new nobles
which were rising up, the earls and barons of the feudal
Lowlands. He was the King, in an especial manner, of the
Church and of the poor.

. . . David’s object was to fix the hierarchy and to erect a
native church, instead of depending on English clergy. To
effect the first of these purposes, he more than doubled the
number of bishops ; and for the latter object, he erected many
monasteries of the Cistercian Order, and houses of regular
canons. . . . He was in some measure a St. Louis in the twelfth
century, and the story of his often returning to his palace at the
petition of a poor man when he had already foot in stirrup,
and the merry horn was calling him to the chase, reminds one
of the oak of Vincennes, under which the good Louis sat to
give judgment to all who came to him. His brother Alexander’s
appetite probably was not spoiled when, in his royal justice, he
hanged a felon ; but David was known to weep on ordering an
execution. In another respect was David like the sainted king.

352

ms TOXICAL SELECTIONS.

The good people, in St. Louis’s reign, made jingling rhymes
about his love for clerks, and one of David’s successors called
him a “ sair saint for the crown.” And yet James might have
had no kingdom to govern, if David had not preceded him ;
and doubtless the crown was not the worse for the prayers
which monks and nuns offered up in the many abbeys founded
by David ; nor were the Scots less religious because he left
nine bishoprics where he found but four. If it had not been
for the unhappy invasion of England, which will be noticed by-
and-by, the parallel with St. Louis would have been complete.

. . . In 1135, Henry the First died, and then began the stormy
reign of Stephen, disastrous for all England, but especially for
the north. . . , Law and justice in those times depended so
much on individuals that the withdrawal of one man was a
signal for general riot. Henry’s power over his nobles was very
much of a personal nature ; he had done what in the fifteenth
century it cost a king of France a rebellion among his nobles
before he could effect ; he had abridged their rights of chase in
favour of the crown. It was not an empty privilege, that of
vert and venison in the broad forests of English oak, which
covered the land; besides the joys of the noisy chase, there
were the huge branches of the oak to keep up the large fire in
the baronial hall, and the substantial banquet of the boar’s
head and venison for the lord and his retainers. Henry had
constituted himself protector-general of woods, forests, deer,
wild boars, and game of all sorts. Some men durst not hunt
in their own woods for fear of finding a king’s officer at their
doors, summoning them to appear at the chief pleas ; and if
Henry’s sharp eye discovered that a wood had been thinned or
wasted, he would impose a fine on the offender. Hardly was the
King dead, than a joint attack on woods and forests took place,
and a general onslaught was made on the large herds of deer,
which a long reign had preserved, “ so that hardly two could
anywhere be seen together.” The highway had always belonged
to the King, as well as the forest, and all offences committed
were punished by his officers, but now the king’s peace was
broken with impunity, for there was no king to keep it. Every
man preyed on his neighbour and made the best of his time;
men wiped off old scores, and revenged themselves on their

DA VID OF SCOTLAND.

353

enemies ; rapine and violence of all sorts reigned in England
as soon as news came that the oM King was dead.

The matter was not much mended when Stephen, by the per-
jury of bishops and barons, was elected to the throne. To do
him justice, at the beginning of his reign he seems certainly to
have done his best to re-establish peace, but his title to the
throne was defective, and when once the Empress landed,
anarchy and confusion took their own course, and it was said
emphatically, that, — “ there was no justice in Stephen's reign.”
Then arose a species of men, which feudalism had ever a ten-
dency to create; their petty lords, who, from their dungeon-keeps
ruthlessly wasted and harried the whole country around them.
Our notions of feudal barons are ever connected with fair castles
and trains of knights, fluttering pennons and glittering armour.
But the fact is, that during the reigns of the first Norman kings
very few nobles were allowed to have castles. It was from the
laxk of fortresses that England fell so soon into the power of the
Conqueror, and he built castles everywhere to keep the country
in awe, but then he kept them in his own hands, and his
soldiers were only warders, not possessors. The manor-house,
and not the castle, was then the characteristic of England;
magnificent Umbravilles and Bagots must as yet content
themselves with a low-moated house, two storeys high, with its
staircase outside, and only to rise by-and-by to the dignity of
a castle. But in King Stephen’s time every man did as he
pleased, or as he could, and when the day of reckoning came, in
Henry’s time, it' was found that every knightling possessed not
only a castle but a seal, like the King of England himself.
Little do they know of these iron-hearted men who picture to
themselves a generous knight-errant pricking forth in search of
adventures. Alas ! chivalry is but an ideal, a high and beauti-
ful standard, created by Christianity, but never realized except
in individuals; for one St. Louis there were a thousand Blue-
beards. The knight of the twelfth century was not the fantastic
and often licentious champion of later times ; but in King
Stephen’s time at least he was often a needy adventurer, who
roamed about the country, pillaging his neighbours and looking

out for a fief. r, .

... As for the nobles, they were but too often men of brutal

A A

354

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

licentiousness, great consumers of beef and wine, and great
oppressors of the poor.

When such men as these were let loose upon the world by the
licence of civil war, it was not wonderful that the defenceless
Church should suffer. The churches were found to be excel-
lent castles, ready made, without the trouble of building.
Thus a certain Geoffry Talbot seized on the cathedral church
of Hereford, expelled the priests, and made it a garrison for
his soldiers ; in the churchyard fortifications were thrown up,
and the dead were torn from their graves, and their bodies
thrown about, while a military engine was in full play on the
tower, throwing large stones and missiles from the place
“ whence,” says the chronicler, “ the sweet and peaceful warn-
ings of the bells were wont to be heard.” This is but one
specimen of what often occurred ; and it will be easily believed
that monasteries were not better treated than secular churches.
The abbeys of Ramsay and Coventry were turned into for-
tresses, and the monks expelled ; a nunnery at Winchester was
burnt, and even the Holy Abbey of St. Etheldreda, at Ely,
was plundered by these wicked soldiers. No place was safe
from them, and the inmates of every monastery might prepare
themselves each night at compline, for the possibility of being
expelled from their homes before the bell sounded for matins.

All this took place south of the Tees ; but the north of Eng-
land was exposed to the inroads of a terrible enemy let loose
upon England by David, king of Scotland. The friendship of
David for Henry the First, and his love for the family of his
mother, and for his niece, the Empress, all induced him to take
her part against Stephen. Her succession to the throne was
looked upon as the restoration of the line of St. Edward to the
English throne. King David, with all the barons of England,
had sworn to King Henry that he would uphold his daughter,
and he would not perjure himself as the others had done. Besides
which, he laid claim to the earldom of Northumberland for his
son Henry. These motives might be enough to call for his
invasion, but still it involved an awful responsibility to let loose
upon the north the savage Piets. David would have been more
like St. Louis had he paused before he put in motion this un
controllable power ; but he was deceived by the Scottish party

DAVID OF SCOTLAND.

355

| among his subjects, who played off his predilection for the
| Saxon line to urge him on against the Saxons of the north of
\ England.

But however this was, in the year 1136, news arrived that
the Scottish army was coming over the border. On came
the torrent, the chivalry of the Lowlands forming its centre,
though far outnumbered by the motley assemblage of half-
naked Galwegians, and men of the Isles. The miseries inflicted
by a modern army, with all its. discipline, are horrible enough,
and a feudal army where each man was accounted for, and
knew his banner, was a scourge wherever it went ; but all this
was nothing to the passage of a horde of undisciplined savages,
most indifferent Christians at home, and giving loose to every
passion which disgraces human nature abroad. It can only be
paralleled with the miseries inflicted by the mercenary troops of
the sixteenth century, when armies were no longer modelled on
the feudal principle, and before the modem standing army had
been introduced. The commissariat of a Pictish host was
doubtless none of the best, and besides this they had all the
wanton cruelty with which the savage loves to torture his
victim. It would be wrong to give the sickening detail of their
cruelties ; suffice it to say that droves of captive women whom
they had made widows and childless, driven before them with
spears, formed the van of this horrible army. This mass when
once set in motion was beyond the control of him who
had called these uncouth beings out of their native morasses.
Churches were burnt and pillaged, and monasteries sacked. In
one case which has happened to remain on record, the poor
monks of Calder, in Copeland, were turned out on the wide
world, with their whole property contained in a wagon drawn
by eight oxen, and this was doubtless not a singular instance.
The only alleviation to this misery was that David placed a
guard of his own soldiers over Hexham, and all the miserable
inhabitants who had taken refuge there. He also gave back
into the hands of the Prior of Hexham all that part of the booty
of the wretched country which had fallen to his share. . . . One
other softer feature amidst this scene of horrors is the circum-
stance that William, abbot of Rievaux, was chosen to give into
the hands of the King of Scotland the town of Wark, which

356

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

belonged to Walter de Espec, the founder of the monastery.
In his white habit he might venture in safety as a messenger of
peace through the Scottish army; and it must have been a I
strange sight to see the abbot at the head of the haggard
inhabitants of the town, who had been reduced by famine to
feed on pickled horse-flesh, issuing from the gates to deliver up
the keys to the Conqueror.

d. The stream of invaders was rapidly moving on towards

38 Rievaux, when it was stopped by an event long afterwards
celebrated in the annals of border warfare — the battle of the
Standard. ... It was a very crusade, this war of the Standard ;
for it was apparently a hopeless task to attempt to stop the
progress of the countless swarms which David had brought out
of Scotland. But the old Archbishop of York implored the
nobles and knights of Yorkshire, for the love of God and His
saints, to venture their lives to save from desolation the houses
of God, and the poor people from all the horrors which were
awaiting them. Aelred1 (the monk and historian of the battle)
becomes enthusiastic when he describes the dark hair, broad
forehead, and large piercing eyes of Walter de Espec, and
details at length the eloquence of the noble soldier when he
addressed the soldiers from the foot of the Standard, and pro-
mised them victory in the name of the saints and of the Lord.
Their standard was a long pole on which floated the banner of
St. Cuthbert, and from which was suspended a pix containing
the Body of the Lord, and under this they swore to conquer or
die. Aelred describes on the day of battle the small compact
body of the English, with their armour glittering in the sun*
and their pennons floating on their lances, while the priests in
their white albs flew from rank to rank to exhort them. The
Bishop of the Orkneys blessed and absolved them, and the
whole army answered his benediction with a loud Amen. Then
the trumpets sounded, and with a wild shriek the Galwegians
came on, but their countless host was broken before the serried

1 Aelred was in his youth brought up in the palace of David — who enter-
tained a warm friendship for him, and bestowed on him the office of high
steward of his household. From religious motives Aelred forsook the court
and became a monk in the Cistercian monastery of Rievaux, in Yorkshire.
He was elected abbot in 1145. — E. M. S.

BA VID OF SCOTLAND.

35 7

ranks of the men-at-arms, around which they closed as the
waves dash against the rock which is islanded amongst them.

They might at length have broken this little band, but their
headlong valour was rendered useless by the incessant clouds
of arrows discharged from the bows of the Yorkshire yeomanry.
However, at the moment that they were yielding, the battle
was again rendered doubtful, for with the speed of lightning
Henry, prince of Scotland, charged with the chivalry of the
Scottish army. . . . They broke through “the lines of the
Southrons as they would sweep aside a cobweb,” and pursued
them off the field. But still poured on the steady ceaseless
showers of the English arrows ; and when Henry returned from
the pursuit, he saw the royal standard, the Dragon, moving off
the field in full flight, and found that he was left almost alone
with a few knights about him.

. . . Turning with a smile to his companions, he bade them
mingle in the pursuit as though they were on the English side :
and setting spurs to his horse, rode right through the enemy to
rejoin his father. This battle freed the north of England from
this horrid scourge ; and it must be said for David, that when
afterwards Northumberland and Durham were ceded to him,
the north was resting in peace while the south was still suffering
all the misery of civil war.

In the Lent of 1153 Aelred, the monk and historian, went or. a. d
a journey which was ever memorable to him. The business of TI53
his order took him into Scotland, and he saw King David for
the last time in his life. . . . But he missed a face which had
ever welcomed him with beaming eyes. Henry the heir of
Scotland, the brave soldier and accomplished prince, had died
the year before, to the irreparable loss of Scotland.

With his devoted piety and enlightened understanding, he
would have been a fitting match for the Henry who was just
about to mount the English throne.

Aelred had left David in the beginning of his reign, full of
schemes for the improvement of a realm which was flourishing
under his care ; now he found him a penitent and a mourner,
bowed down by grief, yet resigned to God’s will. He ac-
knowledged that the death of his son was a fitting punishment,
sent by God for having let loose the savage Galwegians in the

358

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS.

north of England. So poignant had been his grief that had it
not been for the entreaties of his whole realm, bishops and
nobles, he would have given up his crown and sceptre, and
retired to a convent. When Aelred left him, he seemed to
have a presentiment that they should never meet again on this
side the grave, and he embraced him fondly and shed tears
when they parted.

A few months after, at the end of May, shortly before the
Ascension, news were brought to Rievaux that David had died,
as he had lived, a holy death. Aelred mourned for his friend
and benefactor with the poignant grief which was natural to
him.

In the first burst of his sorrow he wrote a sketch of the
good king’s character, and afterwards sent it to one for whom
he felt a great anxiety and love — to Henry II. who had
mounted the throne of England — David’s grand-nephew.

INDEX.

^Ethelberht, first Christian King
of England, io.

Alexander, King, son of Malcolm
Canmore, his reign in Scotland,
349 ; his efforts to promote learn-
ing and strengthen the Church
in Scotland, 349, 350.

Alexander II., Pope, 157; rules the
Church twelve years, 158; cites
the Emperor to appear at Rome
to answer for offences charged
against him, 16 1.

Alfred, King, his character, 17; and
influence on his successors, ib ., 18.

Anglo-Saxon, incorrect use of the
term, 249; colonization in Scot-
land, 260, 261.

Anselm, 203 ; appointed to succeed
Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 205 ; his previous life,
205-209; reluctance to be made
archbishop, 212; is so made by
force, 213; letter to, from the
Archbishop of Rouen, ib. ; his
consecration, 214; resolute op-
position to William Rufus, 215,
216; maintains the power of the
Church against feudalism, 217;
his firmness, 218-220; deserted
by the bishops and supported by
the lay barons, 221 ; persecuted
and banished, 223; cause of
banishment, 224 ; offers the King
his blessing and departs into exile,
225; in Rome, ib, ; recalled by

Henry I., 230; who demands
homage and submission to in-
vestiture, 23 1; which he refuses,
ib. ; the dispute referred to the
Pope, ib. ; declines to consecrate
bishops of the King’s selection,
235 ; whom the Archbishop of
Y ork agrees to consecrate, ib. ;
leaves England, at seventy years
of age, to lay the matter before
the Pope, 237; the papal evasion,
238 ; remains in exile, refusing
conditions offered by the King,
239 ; is flattered by the King,
who at the same time seizes his
revenues, 240 ; threatens Henry
with excommunication, 242; re-
ceives the Pope’s decision as to
homage and investiture, 244 ;
gives immediate effect to it, ib. ;
his death, 245.

Bec, monastery of, gives three arch-
bishops to Canterbury, 104 ; Lan-
franc a secluded penitent there,
ib. ; and assists at the consecration
of the new church of, 1 14.

Bretwalda, or over-lord, 8.

Canmore, Margaret and Malcolm,
41, 246; birth and education of
Malcolm, 251: union with Mar-
garet, 252; their character and

360

INDEX.

great affection for each other,

254 ; charity and Christian humi-
lity of Margaret, ib. ; her attempts
to refine and civilize the people,

255 ; convenes a meeting of the
clergy, 258 ; and argues with them
on Catholic customs and duty, ib. ;
makes enemies thereby, ib. ; and
finally, with her husband, sepa-
rates from the Scottish Church,
ib.; addresses Lanfranc of Can-
terbury, asking him to become
her father in God, 259 ; receives
from him English clergy, ib. ; her
careful training of her children,
262 ; makes them English, how-
ever, rather than Scottish, ib. ; the
names of her children, 263, 264 ;
which cause additional discontent
among her Celtic subjects, ib. ;
Malcolm invades England, 265 ;
retreats before Rufus, 266; with
whom he makes peace, 267; his
privileges in England, 268 ; first
liegeman of the Anglo-Norman
kingdom, ib. ; curious relic of that
office, 269 ; summoned to London
by Rufus, and roughly received by
him, 272 ; returns to Scotland,
and resolves on a raid over the
borders, 273 ; entrusts Margaret
and his children to the care of
Edgar Atheling, ib. ; farewell of
Margaret and Malcolm, ib.; he
is treacherously slain at Alnwick,
274; anxiety and death of Mar-
garet, 275, 276.

Canossa, fortress of “the Great
Countess,” Matilda, 187 ; Pope
Gregory VII. finds a refuge there,
ib. ; and there receives and humbles
the Emperor Henry IV., 188-192;
Gregory conveyed a second time
to, by the Countess, 192.

Canterbury, becomes spiritual metro-
polis of England, 10 ; value of its
archiepiscopal lands in the reign
of William L, 90 ; admission of its
metropolitan dignity, 1 22, 235, 236.

Cardiff, castle of, Robert of Nor
mandy imprisoned there for life,
333-

Carlisle, condition of, in the time ®f
Rufus, 270 ; seized by him and
strengthened, ib. ; repeopled from
the south, 271.

Celibacy of clergy, ordered by
Pope Gregory VII., 120, 163 ;
marriage the rule in England,
120 ; mild order of Lanfranc with
respect to, ib. ; harsh one of Henry
I., 242.

Celtic habits and language uprooted
by Saxon colonization, 7, 271.
{See Welsh.)

Cencius, a Roman noble, assaults
Pope Gregory VII., 175; is par-
doned by him, ib.

Census, the, Anglo-Saxon dislike to,
for purposes of taxation, 86.

Ceorl, the origin of, 22.

Cerdic, his part of the Heptarchy,

9 ; his royal line, ib.; its vast in-
crease of territory and power, 21 ;
its unbroken continuance, 34, 35.

Chivalry, birth of, in France and
Spain, 296 ; its military orders,
297; German origin of the cere-
monial of investing a young
warrior, ib. ; the novitiate of a
knight, 298 ; and dedication, ib. ;
the nature of chivalry, 353.

Christianity, introduction of, into
Saxon England, 10 ; its influence
on the nation, 1 1 ; worship in the
Latin tongue, ib.; influence of,
on the wars between Saxons and
Welsh, 12.

Coggeshale Abbey, founded by King
Stephen, 348.

Comitatus, origin of, 24.

Crusades, the, 278 ; fail to unite
the Eastern and Western Churches
and empires, 289 ; tend to
strengthen the papal power, n
291-294; assist to create in the
Christian mind a belief in the
justice of religious wars, 294, 295 ;

INDEX.

give birth to chivalry, 295 ; ad-
vantages and disadvantages of,
3oa

Cumberland, the original seat of a
Welsh principality, 31, 32 ; ex-
tinction of the Cymri there, 271.

Danes, the, their invasion of Eng-
land, 15 ; winter in the Isle of
Sheppey, ib.; baptism of Guthrum,
their king, by the name of HLthel-
stan, 16 ; territory ceded to them,
ib.; traces of their occupation in
local names, 16, 17; landing of,
under Sveno, 70 ; defeat the Nor-
mans at Y ork, ib. ; retreat before
William, 71 ; who furiously de-
vastates the country, ib.

David, king of Scotland, 349; his
previous life in England, 351;
his efforts to found a native
church in his kingdom, ib. ; his
piety, 352 ; takes part with the
Empress Matilda against Stephen,
354 ; crosses the border, 355 ; is
defeated in the battle of the
Standard, 357; his retreat, ib. ;
and death, 358.

Dermot, king of Leinster, receives
the sons of Harold, 68.

Domesday Book, 86 ; results of the
great survey, 90.

Dunfermline Abbey, founded by the
Canmores, 260.

Durham Abbey, corner-stone of,
laid, Malcolm Canmore assisting
in the ceremony, 272.

Eadmer, the monk, his character
of William the Conqueror, 78;
and of Anselm, 208, 214; his
picture of Anselm’s opponents,
219 ; and of Anselm’s death, 245 ;
is elected to the see of St.

36i

Andrews, 349; leaves it, and
returns to Canterbury, ib.

Ealdorman, meaning of the term,
19, 20.

Ecgberht, king of the West Saxons,
14 ; reduces all the English king-
doms to his sway, ib.

Edgar Atheling, chosen king by the
Witan, 61 ; yields to William the
Conqueror, 62 ; and receives from
him an extensive property, 64;
his flight with his mother and
sisters for Hungary, 68 ; is driven
into the Frith of Forth, ib. ; and
kindly received by King Malcolm,
ib. ; submits to the Conqueror, and
receives good treatment, 77; the
last male descendant of Cerdic,
ib. ; obtains permission to go to the
Holy Land, ib. ; has a place after-
wards in the court of Rufus, ib. ;
further particulars of his refuge
in Scotland, 264; assists to make
peace between Rufus and Mal-
colm Canmore, 267 ; his lands
restored, 269 ; appointed guardian
of Margaret Canmore and her
children, 273 ; fulfils his trust, 277 ;
pensioned by Henry I., 333.

Edgar, king of Scotland, son of
Malcolm Canmore, 349.

Editha, daughter of Malcolm Can-
more, 271 ; placed in charge of
her aunt, the Abbess of Romsey,
who tries to induce her to take the
veil, ib.; but fails, 272; Editha’s
subsequent place in history, as
Matilda, 277, 278.

Edwin, Earl, brother of Earl Morcar,
opposes the Conqueror, 61 ; sub-
mits, 62 ; again in rebellion, 68 ;
his submission, ib. ; attempt made
to secure him, 73 ; his concealment,
ib. ; is betrayed and slain, ib.

Englishmen, early use of the term, 4 ;
application to the entire nation, 8.

English towns, their condition im-
mediately after the Conquest, 88,
89.

362

INDEX.

Espec, Walter de, the hero of the
“Standard,” 356.

Exeter, defence of, against the Con-
queror, 67.

Feudalism, its remote origin doubt-
ful, 80 ; its extension of the family
principle to great aggregates, 81 ;
homage of tenant to lord, ib.; dis-
tinction between homage and
fealty, 82 ; precedence of the
Church, ib. ; feudal land tenure,
ib. ; obligations of a feudal vassal,
83; and of the lord, 84; exten-
sion of, to national affairs, and
influence thereon, ib. ; its univer-
sal application, ib. ; a woman’s
marriage promise resembling an
oath of homage, ib.; it contains
the representative theory, 85 ; its
titles given, in the French lan-
guage, to the Saviour and His
Virgin Mother, 299 ; its bane-
ful increase during the reign of
Stephen in England, 353.

F eversham Abbey, founded by King
Stephen, 349.

Fitzosborne, William, his advice to
William, duke of Normandy, on
Harold’s assumption of the crown
of England, 36 ; his offer to sup-
ply ships, 38 ; joint governor of
the kingdom in William’s absence,

65-

Roger, son of William,

his insurrection against the Con-
queror, 77 ; is defeated, ib. ; and
sentenced to perpetual imprison-
ment and the loss of his property,
78-

Forest Laws, origin of, 312; rigor-
ously extended and enforced by
the Conqueror, ib. ; feeling of the
people thereto, ib. ; and supersti-
tion with respect to the devastated
territory, 3 13-3 15.

Forest, New, creation of, by the

devastation of 17,000 acres of
land, 96.

Furness Abbey, founded by King
Stephen, 349.

Gaels, their alarm at the reforms
of Margaret Canmore, 256; in-
surrection after Malcolm’s death, i
276, 277.

Godfrey of Boulogne, commander
of the Crusaders, 287 ; in battle
before Jerusalem, 306; made King
of Jerusalem, 310 ; dies, 31 1.

Geoffrey, bishop of Constance, 1 15.

Plantagenet, count of Anjou,

his marriage to Matilda, 338; his
death, 346.

Gurth, brother of Harold, 46 ; re-
turns his brother’s answer to
William on the eve of the battle
of Hastings, 49 ; slain in the
battle, 58.

Guthrum, the Danish king, baptized
by the name of yEthelstan, 16.

Harold, King, betrayed by his
brother Tostig, 35 ; omits to sub-
mit his title to the Pope, 41 ; is
declared an usurper, ib. ; his popu-
lar government, ib. ; his victories,

45 ; advances to meet the Duke
of Normandy, 46; gives battle to
him at Hastings, 52 ; his heroic
conduct, 55; his death, 58; flight
of his mother and children, the
latter to the Duke of Leinster, 68 ;
return of his sons at the head of an
expedition, 69 ; are defeated, ib. ;
and retire to Denmark, 70 ; mar-
riage of their sister, ib.

Hastings, battle of, 35.

Hauteville, Tancred de, a Norman
gentleman, father of a renowned
family, 138 ; arrival of his sons,
William, Drogo, and Humphrey,

INDEX.

in Italy, 138; gallant deeds there,
ib. ; William chosen by the Nor-
mans their chief magistrate, 139;
his death, 140 ; arrival of two
more brothers, Robert and Hubert,
ib. ; murder of Drogo, ib. ; victory
over the Pope and Emperor by
Humphrey and Robert, 14 1 ; their
wisdom after the victory, ib.;
death of Humphrey, ib. ; arrival
of Roger, the youngest of the
brothers, 142 ; his deeds in Sicily,
143-148; death of Robert, 148;
dispute of Roger with Pope
Urban II., 150; important con-
cessions of the Pope, ib.; Roger
becomes possessed of the last
Saracen stronghold in Sicily, ib. ;
master of the entire island, 15 1;
his death, 152.

Henry Beauclerk, his character,
227, 228; “consecrated to be
made king,” 228 ; his church
policy, 230, 231 ; contests with
Anselm, 231-240 ; his cruelty and
duplicity, 240 ; yields to Anselm’s
threat of excommunication, 241,
242 ; his revenge by taxing the
married clergy, 243 ; further par-
ticulars of his claim to the crown,
322, 323 ; declares that he owes
it to the people, 324 ; his Great
Charter, 327, 328; treaty with
his brother Robert, 330 ; breaks
it, ib. ; his ill treatment of Robert,
331 ; his son William and daugh-
ter drowned, 336 ; his grief, zb. ;
remarks on his character, 340.

Henry, prince of Scotland, son of
King David, his valour and death,
357-

Henry IV., emperor of Germany,
147 ; acknowledges Hildebrand
Pope, 158; his early education,
159-161 ; summoned to Rome by
Pope Alexander at the instigation
of Hildebrand, 16 1, 167; insur-
rection against, 168 ; is formally
deposed, in the presence of his

363

mother, by the Pope, 178; his
despair, 181 ; deserted by his
German subjects, 182 ; appeals to
the Lombards against the Pope,
ib. ; his great humiliation, 186-
188 ; and in the fortress of Ca-
nossa, 189-191 ; defeated by the
insurgents, 197 ; excommunicated,
and deprived of rank and author-
ity, ib. ; defeated by the Normans
in Italy, 201 ; returns to his Ger-
man dominions, ib.

Heptarchy, the, its territorial divi-
sions and character, 8-10.

Hereward, the Saxon, drives the
Normans from his paternal estate,
74 ; destroys the Abbey of Peter-
borough, ib. ; his daring, and
gallant deeds, 75 ; is besieged by
the Conqueror in the Isle of Ely,
ib. ; escapes, ib. ; is offered terms
by William, 76 ; which he ac-
cepts, ib. ; the last Englishman
with sword in hand against the
Normans, ib.

Herluin, abbot of Bee, his character
and work, 102- 104.

Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII.,
prior of Clugni, 154 ; cardinal,
ib. ; legate, 155 ; effects a revo-
lution in the elective power, 157 ;
his nomination of five Popes, 158 ;
is triumphantly elected Pope, ib. ;
views of the Papacy, 162, 163 ;
edicts against clerical marriages,
163 ; resolution in carrying it
into effect, 164; his haughty
demands of homage from kings,
166 ; his difficulty therein with
the Normans in England and
Sicily, ib.; his treatment of the
Emperor Henry IV., 168-170;
is assaulted, and carried away
prisoner, 174; his serenity in
danger, 175 ; deposed by a synod,
176 ; denounced to his face in
the Vatican, 177 ; deposes the
Emperor, 178; is himself excom-
municated by the Archbishop of

364

INDEX.

Utrecht, 18 1 ; fate of the excom-
municator, 182 ; rescript for the
election of a new Emperor, 184;
decision of the Diet, 185 ; hum-
bles the Emperor, 188 — 19 1 ; is
defied by the Lombards, 192; in
danger, and saved by the countess
Matilda, ib. ; who grants him and
his successors all her hereditary
states in full allodial dominion,
193 ; his danger and courage,
199 ; takes refuge in the Castle of
St. Angelo, 200 ; rescued by the
Normans under Robert de Haute-
ville, 201 ; his last hours, 202 ;
and death, 203.

Hlaford, or the loaf-giver, 23.

Holy Land, 278 ; pilgrimages to,
opposed by several of the early
Fathers, 279 ; but still persisted in
by “the devout,” 280 ; Crusaders
in, 301-31 1.

Homage, feudal, its character, 81.

Isle of Man, originally Maccus, 18 ;
dominated by William the Con-
queror, 79.

I vo de Tailbois, grant of land to,

74 ; defeated by Hereward, ib. ;
advice to William to employ a
sorceress against the great Saxon,

75 ; the sorceress slain, ib.

Jerusalem, under the Mahomme-
dans, 281 ; first sight of by the Cru-
saders, 301, 302 ; their conduct,

302 ; the force of the besiegers,

303 ; and of the beseiged, ib. ; the
city, ib.; the camp of the besiegers,
ib. ; the assault, 305-307 ; is en-
tered by the Crusaders, 307 ; fear-
ful slaughter of the Mohammedan
population of, 308; after which
the Crusaders go to prayer, 309 ;

Godfrey of Boulogne made king,
310 ; great exodus of the Mo-
hammedans, 31 1.

Kent, the first Christian kingdom in
England, 10.

Kingship, its meaning among Teu-
tonic nations, 19, 20; gradual in-
crease of its power and dignity,
21 ; checks imposed on its growth
by the Teutonic tendency to self-
government, ib.

Lanfranc, 91; his birth, 98; estab-
lishes a school in Normandy, 100;
retires from the world, 101 ; ad-
venture with robbers, ib. ; admis-
sion to the monastery of Bee, 102;
is received by Herluin, 103 ; the
high reputation he attains there,
104; opposes the marriage of the
Duke of Normandy, 105 ; curious
beginning of the Duke’s esteem
for him, 106; obtains a dispensa-
tion for the marriage, 107 ; refusal
to be Archbishop of Rouen, 109;
and Archbishop of Canterbury, ib. ;
but yields in the latter case, and
is consecrated, no; finds Canter-
bury nearly in ruins from a great
fire, ib. ; visit to Rome, 112; law-
suit against Odo, bishop of Ba-
yeux, 1 13; rebuilds the cathedral,
ib.; supports the King against the
Pope’s demand for homage, 118,
1 19; separation of the spiritual
and lay courts, 119, 120; his
councils, 120 ; letter to Margaret
of Scotland (see Margaret Can-
more), 1 21 ; controversy with the
Archbishop elect of York, 122;
controversy with the monks of St.
Augustine’s, 123 ; his stern mea-
sures, 123, 124 ; ordered by the
Conqueror to crown William

INDEX.

365

Rufus, 128 ; his death and burial,
129.

Language in England before the
Conquest, 4 ; changes introduced
by the conquerors and mission-
aries, 6.

Leo IX., Pope, defeated by the
Normans, and courteously treated
by them, 14 1 ; particulars of his
election to the papal chair, 154 ;
his death, 155.

Local English nomenclature, Teu-
tonic, 6 ; Celtic element almost
removed from, 7; traces in, of
Danish colonization, 17.

Lombards, the, in Italy, 136 ; defy
Hildebrand, 192 ; and, under
Henry IV., besiege the Pope in
Canossa, 193.

Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of
England, married to the Emperor
Henry V., 337 ; and, afterwards,
to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of
Anjou, 338 ; declared by Henry
his heir, 339 ; defeats Stephen of
Blois, 344 ; asks help from the
King of Scotland, 345 ; and re-
ceives it, ib. ; escape from Oxford,
346 ; King David invades Eng-
land, 355.

Matilda, “the Great Countess,” of
Tuscany, her character, 179, 180;
devotion to the Papacy, ib .; at-
tends the papal progress, 187 ;
rescues the Pope when in im-
minent danger, and carries him
to her fortress of Canossa, ib. ;
where she makes to him and his
successors a grant of her lands,
193 ; is defeated by the Emperor’s
troops, 198; is victorious, 201 ;

' her resolute character, and death
at the age of seventy-five, 201,

- 202.

Morcar, Earl, 61 ; surprised by the
Normans, 68 ; escapes to Here-

ward, 73 ; is captured and con-
demned to perpetual imprison-
ment, 75.

Morcar, Earl, mother and sister of,

88.

Nicholas II., Pope, elected, 157 ;
dies, ib.

Norman Conquest, its exceptional
character in the history of Teu-
tonic nations, 1 ; its influence on
England, ib.; its overthrow, but
not displacement, of Anglo-Saxon
nationality, 2 ; the conquerors
become Englishmen, 4; military
organization, 86; Domesday Book,
ib.; population of England, 87 ;
and class distinctions, ib. ; dis-
possession of the English land-
holders, 88 ; position of the great
towns, 88, 89 ; and of the nobility,
90; the Church, 91 ; curtailment
of its power, 93 ; use of the
Latin language in the law courts,
95 ; practical division of the
country for administrative pur-
poses, ib. ; comparative indebt-
edness of the country to Saxon
and Norman, 97.

Normans, the, in Sicily (see Haute-
ville); results of the conquest of
England by, 85-97.

Northmen. (See Danes.)

Odo, bishop of Bayeux, half-brother
of William the Conqueror, 37;
celebrates mass on the eve of the
battle of Hastings, 49 ; advances
with William to rally the wavering
Normans, 57 ; made joint gover-
nor with Fitzosborne during the
King’s absence from England, 65 ;
his estrangement from William,
1 16; who carries his bitterness
with him to the grave, 134.

366

INDEX .

Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, settles
his see at Old Sarum, 127 ; and
builds his cathedral, ib.; adoption
by him of an English ritual, ib .

Otho of Nordheim, the great Saxon
insurgent, 168 ; his attack on the
Emperor, ib.; who capitulates to
him, 169; is defeated by the
Emperor, 172 ; is again in arms,
182; and victorious, 198; his
death, 201.

Papacy, its condition for a century
and a half after the fall of the
Carlo vingian dynasty, 153 ; great
sacerdotal victory, 157; election
of two Popes, ib. ; intellectual
supremacy under Hildebrand,
165, 166, 170.

Paschal II., Pope, letter to Anselm,
233.

Percy, traditional account of the
origin of the name, 274.

Peter the Hermit, 282 ; his appeals
to Christendom, 283-285.

Pevensey Bay, the landing-place of
William the Conqueror, 44; who
leaves it with an English army for
Normandy, 64.

Robert of Normandy, son of
William the Conqueror, associated
in the regency at fourteen years of
age, 42 ; his imperfect title to the
throne, 228; before Jerusalem,
305 ; in the assault, 307 ; . seizes
Normandy and prepares to invade
England, 329 ; strong support of
his claims, ib. ; mediation of
Anselm and others, 330; treaty
with Henry, ib.; is imprisoned,
and only released on resigning
his pension, 331 ; again im-
prisoned, for life, 333.

Rudolph of Swabia, the Diet offers
him the crown of Henry IV., 168 ;
escapes for his life, ib.; fights
for Henry against the Saxons,

1 71 ; is crowned Emperor, 193,
194; his great victory, 197; re-
ceives direct papal authority to
assume the crown, ib. ; victory,
and death, 198.

Saracens, in Sicily, 138, 142 ;
defeated by the Normans, 1 43-
145 ; their capital taken, E46 ; and
last fortress in Sicily, 150 : in

the Holy Land, 302-307 ; fearful
slaughter of, 308 ; their despair,
and departure from the land,
311*

Saxons, the, Englishmen so termed
by their Celtic neighbours, 4 ;
their complete conquest of Eng-
land, 5-8 ; firm consolidation of
their nationality, 18 p- their king-
ship and freedom, 20, 21 ; Eorls
and C eorls, 22 ; the Hlaford, or
loaf-giver,23; the Thegn or Thane,
ib. ; degradation of the Ceorl, 24;
villainage, ib. ; local assemblies
giving way to national ones, 26;
partial loss of popular power, ib. ;
the Witenagemot, or Meeting of
the Wise, 27 ; its power, 28, 29 ;
its joint action with the king, 30;
its power to oppose him, ib.

— under Otho of Nordheim,

insurrection and war against the
Emperor Henry IV., 167-172,
and 182-201.

Scone Abbey founded and built,

35°.

Scotland after the Norman Con-
quest, 247 ; its great family names
and ancestry, 248 ; ancient dis-
tricts and population of, 249 :
“Ireland the original Scotland,”
250 ; strength and completeness
of the feudal tenure in, 261, 262 ;

INDEX.

367

state of, after the death of the
Canmores, 349.

Scottish Church, irregular customs
of, 257 ; is scarcely known to the
Catholic world, ib. ; Queen Mar-
garet and the clergy, 258 ; ap-
pointments to, by King Alexan-
der, 349, 350; and by King
David, 351.

Sheriff, creation of the office of, 25.

Shire, government of, 24, 25.

Standard, battle of, 356.

Stephen, King, crowned, 341 ; is
defeated and imprisoned by Ma-
tilda, 344; released in exchange,
345, 346 ; capture of Oxford, 346 ;
dies without issue, 349 ; sad state
of the country, 352, 353.

Stephen IX., Pope, elected, 156;
dies, ib.

Stigand, metropolitan of England,
61 ; submits to William I., 62 ; is
suspended, 63 ; removed from the
see, and condemned to lifelong
imprisonment, 91.

Tancred before Jerusalem, 304, 307.

Teutons, their complete conquest of
Britain. (See Saxons, Celtic, Nor-
man Conquest, and Scotland.)

Thegn or Thane, 23.

Tyrrell, Walter, his connexion with
Rufus, 316 ; is supposed guilty of
the murder of Rufus, 318 ; and
pursued, ib. ; protests his inno-
cence, 318, 319.

Urban II., Pope, his dispute with
Roger de Hauteville, 150 ; his
election supported by Anselm,
217-226; his death, 226; at the
Council of Claremont, 285 ; his
great speech, 286 ; its effect, 287 ;
intelligence of the failure of the
Crusade, 288.

Victor II., Pope, elected, 155 ; his
death, 156.

Walter the Pennyless, gathers a
disorderly host for the Crusade,
287.

Waltheof, Earl, joins the Danes
against William the Conqueror,
70; defends York, 71; is par-
doned by William, 72 ; is married
to William’s niece, Judith, ib. ;
refuses to join in Roger Fitz-
osborne’s insurrection, 77 ; but
swears secrecy, ib. ; is betrayed
by his wife, 78; and executed,
ib. ; fate of his wife, ib. ; dis-
covery of his body, 125 ; and
strong feeling of the people, ib.;
is declared a martyr by Wulf-
ketul, abbot of Croyland, ib.

Welsh, their language in Britain
displaced by the Saxons, and only
applied to small, domestic matters,
4-7 ; changes brought about by
Christianity in their wars with
the English, 12 ; the Strathclyde
Welsh, 31 ; subdued by Harold,
41-

William de Meschines, grant of land
to, in the North, 265.

William the Conqueror: he finds
England Teutonic, as left by
Eadgar, 18 ; his changes in the
character of English kingship, 19 ;
receives intelligence of the coro-
nation of Harold, 35 ; his apparent
trouble, 36 ; is cheered by William
Fitzosbome, ib.; his dissimulation,
37 ; he calls a council, and sends an
embassy to Harold, ib. ; Harold s
reply, ib. ; lukewarmness of the
council, 38, 39 ; he is lectured by
the King of France, ib. ; his
haughty reply, 40 ; arrives at Pe-
vensey Bay, 44 ; takes up a posi-

368

INDEX .

tion between Pevensey and Hast-
ings, 45 ; his proposals to Harold,
46 ; receives counter- proposals, ib. ;
attempts further negotiations, 48,
49 ; the battle of Hastings begins,
49 ; Harold’s death, 58 ; victory,
59 ; presents Harold’s standard to
the Pope, 60 ; burns the suburbs
of London, 61 ; devastates the
country, 62 ; is crowned at West-
minster Abbey by the Archbishop
of York, 62, 63 ; embarks for
Normandy, 64; returns to Eng-
land, 66 ; coronation of the
duchess Matilda, 67 ; suppresses
insurrections in the North, 68-
70; his barbarous policy, 71;
marches from York to Chester and
Salisbury, 72, 73 ; is baffled by
Hereward, 73, 74; captures the
Isle of Ely, 75 ; reconciliation
with Hereward, 76 ; his character,
by Eadmer, 78 ; his jealousy of the
national clergy, 92 ; his refusal to
do homage to the Pope, 116, 117 ;
declares war against France, 131 ;
is injured by a fall, ib. ; approach
of death, 132; apportions his do-
minions and property among his
sons, ib.; William Rufus and
Henry at his bedside, 132, 133;
but desert him to secure their pos-
sessions, 133 ; he commands all the
prison doors in his dominions to
be opened, except that on his
brother Odo, 134 ; forgives Odo,
ib . ; is deserted by his nobles, ib. ;
his death, ib.; his property stolen
and body stripped, ib.; his de-
graded burial, 135 ; church policy
of, 203-205.

William Rufus, son of the Con-
queror, 209-212; his contests
with Anselm, 212-226; further
particulars of, 313 ; superstitions
with respect to the New Forest,
ib.; omens, 314 : he seeks sport
in the Forest, 317; his death,
318 ; and character, 319, 320 ;
conjectures as to tjie cause of
his death, 321.

William, son of Robert of Nor-
mandy, 333 ; claim to the crown
acknowledged by the King of
France, 334 ; but forgotten by him
for the time, 335, 336 ; is received
at the French court, 337 ; his
death, 338.

William, Prince, son of Henry I.,
drowned, with his sister and
others, 336.

Wulfketul, abbot of Croyland, de-
clares Waltheof a martyr, 125 ;
is accused of idolatry and de-
graded, ib.

York, religious metropolis of the
North, 10; taken by Tostig,
Harold’s brother, 45, 46; its in-
surrection against the Conqueror,
68 ; submits to him, ib. ; set on
hre by the Norman garrison, 70;
great part of the city destroyed,
ib.; arrival of the Danes, ib.;
and defeat of the Normans, ib. ;
capture of the city by William,
71 ; his savage revenge, 71, 72.

Archbishop of, called upon to

exercise metropolitan power, 235,
236.

LONDON : R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

March, 1871.

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other well-known critics , an analysis of the orations, and an index.

DEMOSTHENES ON THE CROWN. The Greek Text with
English Notes. By B. Drake, M.A., late Fellow of King’s
College, Cambridge. Fourth Edition, to which is prefixed
AESCHINES AGAINST CTESIPHON, with English Notes.
F cap. 8vo. 5a

An Introduction discusses the immediate causes of the two orations, and
their general character. The Notes contain frequent references to the best
authorities. Among the appendices at the end is a chronological table ip
the life and public career of AEs chines and Demosthenes.

Hodgson.— MYTHOLOGY FOR LATIN VERSIFICATION.
A brief Sketch of the Fables of the Ancients, prepared to be
rendered into Latin Verse for Schools. By F. PIodgson, L.D.,
late Provost of Eton. New Edition, revised by F. C. Hodgson,
M.A. i8mo. 3 a

A 2

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

The late Provost of Eton has here supplied a help to the composition of
Latin Verse , combined with a brief introduction to Classical Mythology .
In this new edition a few mistakes have been rectified ; rules have been
added to the Prosody ; and a more uniform system has been adopted with
regard to the help afforded,

Juvenal.— Thirteen Satires of JUVENAL. With a Commentary.
By John E. B. Mayor, M.A., Fellow of St. John’s College,
Cambridge. Second Edition, enlarged. Part I. Crown 8vo. sewed.
3 s. 6d.

The text is accompanied by a copious Commentary. For various notes
the author is indebted to Professors Munro and Conington . All the
citations have been taken anew from the original authors .

Marshall. — a table of irregular Greek verbs

classified according to the arrangement of Curtius’ Greek Grammar.
By J. M. Marshall, M. A., Fellow and late Lecturer of Brasenose
College, Oxford ; one of the Masters in Clifton College. 8vo.
cloth, ij-.

The system of this table has been borrowed from the excellent Greek
Grammar of Dr. Curtius.

Mayor (John E. B.)— FIRST GREEK READER. Edited
after Karl Halm, with Corrections and large Additions by John
E. B. Mayor, M.A. Fellow and Classical Lecturer of St. John’s
College, Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo.

4^0 6d.

A selection of short passages , serving to illustrate especially the Greek
Accidence. A good deal of syntax is incidentally taught , and Madvig and
other books are cited , for the use of masters : but no learner is expected to
know more of syntax than is contained in the Notes and Vocabulary.
A preface il To the Reader not only explains the aim and method of
the volume , but also deals with classical instruction generally. The
extracts are uniformly in the Attic dialect , and any Hellenistic forms
occurring in the original classic authors , such * as AElian and Polybius,
have been discarded in favour of the corresponding Attic expressions.
This book may be used in connexion with Mayor' s <£ Greek for Beginners .”

CLASSICAL.

Mayor (Joseph B,)— GREEK for beginners. By the

Rev. J. B. Mayor, M.A., Professor of Classical Literature in
King’s College, London. Part I., with Vocabulary, is. 6d. ;
Parts II. and III., with Vocabulary and Index, 3^. 6d. ; complete
in one vol., fcap. 8vo. cloth, 4s. 6d.

The distinctive method oj this book consists in building up a boy's
knowledge of Greek upon the foundation of his knowledge oj English and
Latin , instead of trusting everything to the unassisted memory. The
forms and constructions of Greek have been thoroughly compared with
those of Latin, and no Greek words have been used in the earlier part oj
the book except such as have connexions either in English or Latin. Each
step leads naturally on to its successor , grammatical forms and rules are
at once applied in a series of graduated exercises , accompanied by ample
vocabularies. Thus the book serves as Grammar , Exercise book , and
Vocabulary. Where possible , the Grammar has been simplified ; the
ordinary ten declensions are reduced to three , which correspond to the
first three in Latin ; and the system of stems is adopted. A genei'al
Vocabulary , and Lndex of Greek words, completes the work.

Peile (John, M.A.) — AN INTRODUCTION TO GREEK
AND LATIN ETYMOLOGY. By John Peile, M. A., Fellow
and Assistant Tutor of Christ’s College, Cambridge, formerly
Teacher of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge. 8vo. 10s. 6 d.

These Philological Lectures are the result of Notes made during the
author's reading during the last three or four years . These Notes were
Put into the shape of lectures , delivered at Christ's College , during the last
May term , as one set in the 6 ‘ Intercollegiate ” list. They are now printed
with some additions and modifications , but substantially as they were
delivered.

PlatO. — THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. Translated into English,
with an Analysis and Notes, by J. Ll. Davies, M.A., and D. J.
Vaughan, M.A. Third Edition, with Vignette Portraits of Plate
and Socrates, engraved by Jeens from an Antique Gem. i8mo.
4J-. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

An introductory notice supplies some account of the life op Plato , and
the translation is preceded by an elaborate analysis . “ The translators

havef in the judgment of the Saturday Review, il produced a book which
any reader , whether acquainted with the original or not , can peruse with
pleasure as well as profit. ”

Plautus (Ramsay).— THE MOSTELLARIA OF PLAU-
TUS. With Notes Critical and Explanatory, Prolegomena, and
Excursus. By William Ramsay, M.A., formerly Professor ot
Humanity in the University of Glasgow. Edited by Professor
George G. Ramsay, M.A., of the University of Glasgow. 8vo.
14s.

“ The fruits of that exhaustive research and that ripe and well-digested
scholarship which its author brought to bear upon everything that he
undertook are visible throughout it. It is furnished with a complete
apparatus of prolegomena, notes , and excursus ; and for the use of veteran
scholars it probably leaves nothing to be desired .” — Pall Mall Gazette.

Potts (Alex. W., M.A.) — HINTS TOWARDS LATIN
PROSE COMPOSITION. By Alex. W. Potts, M.A., late
Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge ; Assistant Master in
Rugby School ; and Head Master of the Fettes College, Edinburgh.
Second Edition, enlarged. Extra fcap. 8vo. cloth. y.

Those engaged in Classical teaching seem to be unanimously of the
opinion that Composition in Latin Prose is not only the most efficient
method of acquiring a mastery of the Latin language , but is in itself
a valuable means of mental training , and an admirable corrective of some
of the worst features in English writing. An attempt is here made to
give students , after they have mastered ordinary syntactical rules , some idea
of the characteristics of Latin Prose and the means to be employed to
reproduce them. Some notion of the treatment of the subject may be
gathered. from the i Contents .’ Chap. I. — Characteristics of Classical
Latin , Hints on turning English into Latin ; Chap. II. — Arrangement
of Words in a Sentence ; Chap. III. — Unity in Latin Prose , Subject and
Object ; Chap. IV. — On the Period in Latin Prose ; Chap. V. — On the
position of the Relative and Relative Clauses.

CLASSICAL.

Roby. A LATIN GRAMMAR for the Higher Classes in Grammar
Schools. By H. J. Roby, M. A. [/* the Pres5t

Sallust.— CAII SALLUSTII CRISPI CATILINA ET JUGUR-
THA. For Use in Schools. With copious Notes. By C.
Merivale, B.D. (In the present Edition the Notes have been
carefully revised, and a few remarks and explanations added. )
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d.

The JUGURTHA and the CATILINA may be had separately, price
2s. 6d. each.

This edition of Sallust , prepared by the distinguished historian of Rome,
contains an introduction , concerning the life and works of Sallust , lists
of the Consuls , and elaborate notes .

Tacitus. — THE HISTORY OF TACITUS TRANSLATED
INTO ENGLISH. By A. J. Church, M.A., and W. J.
Brodribb, M.A. With Notes and a Map. 8vo. 10s. 6 d.

The translators have endeavoured to adhere as closely to the original as
was thought consistent with a proper observance of English idiom . At
the same time , it has been their aim to reproduce the precise expressions oj
the author. The campaign of Civilis is elucidated in a note of some length ,
which is illustrated by a map , containing the names of places and of tribes
occurring in the work. There is also a complete account of the Roman army
as it was constituted in the time of Tacitus. This work is characterised
by the Spectator as “ a scholarly and faithful translation. ”

THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA OF TACITUS. A Revised
Text, English Notes, and Maps. By Alfred J. Church, M.A.,
and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d.

“ We have endeavoured , with the aid of recent editions , thoroughly to
elucidate the text , explaining the various difficulties , critical and gramma-
tical, which occur to the student. We have consulted throughout , besides
the older commentators , the editions of Ritter and Orelli , but we are
under special obligations to the labours of the recent German editors , Wex
and Kritz.” Two Indexes are appended , (1) of Proper Names , (2) of
Words and Phrases explained

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

T acitus — continued .

THE AGRICOLA and GERMANIA may be had separately, price
2s. each.

THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA. Translated into English
by A. J. Church, M.A., and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. With
Maps and Notes. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2 s. 6d.

The translators have sought to produce such a version as may satisfy
scholars who demand a faithflil rendering of the original , and English
readers who are offended by the baldness and frigidity which commonly
disfigure translations. The treatises are accompanied by introductions ,
notes , maps , and a chronological summary . The Athenaeum says of this
work that it is “ a version at once readable and exact , which may be perused
with pleasure by all, , and consulted with advantage by the classical student

Theophrastus. — THE CHARACTERS OF THEO-
PHRASTUS. An English Translation from a Revised Text.
With Introduction and Notes. By R. C* JeBb, M.A., Public
Orator in the University of Cambridge. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d.

To the average English reader Theophrastus is little known. At the
present time , when there is a general desire to see ancient life more vividly
on every side from which it can illustrate our own , it seems possible that
the characters of Theophrastus may possess some potent interest. The text
has tender goite careful revision. An Introduction supplies an account op
the origin of the book , and of writers who have imitated it : as Hall ,
Sir Thomas Overbury , eutd others. The notes are for the most part
selected from ancient sources.

Thring.— Works by the Rev. E. THRING, M.A., Head Master
of Uppingham School.

A LATIN GRADUAL. A First Latin Construing Book for
Beginners. By Edward Thring, M.A. New Edition, enlarged,
with Coloured Sentence Maps. Fcap. 8vo. 2 s. 6d.

The Head Master of Uppingham has here sought to supply by easy steps
a knowledge of grammar, combined with a good Vocabulary . Passages
have been selected from the best Latin authors in prose and verse . These

CLASSICAL .

Thring — continued .

passages are gradually built up in their grammatical structure, and
finally printed in full. A short practical manual of common mood con-
structions, with their English equivalents, forms a second part .

A MANUAL OF MOOD CONSTRUCTIONS. Fcap.8vo. is. 6d.

Treats of the ordinary mood constructions, as found in the Latin, Greek,
and English languages ;

A CONSTRUING BOOK. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

Thucydides.— THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION. Being Books
VI. and VII. of Thucydides, with Notes. A New Edition, revised
and enlarged, with a Map. By the Rev. Percival Frost, M. A.,
late Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Fcap. 8vo. 5a
This edition is mainly a grammatical one. Attention is called to the
force of compound verbs , and the exact meaning of the various tenses
employed.

Virgil.— THE WORKS OF VIRGIL RENDERED INTO
ENGLISH PROSE* with Introductions, Running Analysis, and
an Index, by James Lonsdale, M.A. and Samuel Lee, M.A.
Globe 8vo. 3J. 6d gilt edges, 4s. 6d.

The preface of this new volume infor?ns us that “ the original has been
faithfully rendered, and paraphrase altogether avoided. At the same time,
the translators have endeavoured to adapt the book to the use of the
English reader. Some amount of rhythm in the structure of the sentence
has been generally maintained ; and, when in the Latin the sound of the
words is an echo to the sense (as so frequently happens in Virgil ), an
attempt has been made to produce the same result in English A

The general introduction gives us whatever is known of the poet's life ,
an estimate of his genius, an account of the principal editions and trans-
lations of his works, and a brief view of the influence he has had on
modern poets ; special introductory essays are prefixed to the “Eclogues,'

“ Georgies,” and “ AEneid.” The text is divided into sections, each of
which is headed by a concise analysis of the subject ; the index contains
references to all the characters and events of any importance.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Wright.— Works by J. WRIGHT, M.A., late Head Master of
Sutton Coldfield School.

HELLENICA ; OR, A HISTORY OF GREECE IN GREEK, as
related by Diodorus and Thucydides ; being a First Greek Reading
Book, with explanatory Notes, Critical and Historical. Third
Edition, with a Vocabulary. i2mo. 3^. 6d.

In the last twenty chapters of this volume , Thucydides sketches the rise
and progress of the Athenian Empire in so clear a style and in such simple
language , that the editor has doubts whether any easier or more instruc-
tive passages can be selected for the use of the pupil who is commencing
Greek. This book includes a chronological table of the events recorded.

A HELP TO LATIN GRAMMAR ; or, The Form and Use of Words
in Latin, with Progressive Exercises. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d.

This book is not intended as a rival to any of the excellent Grammars
now in use ; but as a help to enable the beginner to understand them.

THE SEVEN KINGS OF ROME. An Easy Narrative, abridged
from the First Book of Livy by the omission of Difficult Passages;
being a First Latin Reading Book, with Grammatical Notes.
With Vocabulary and Exercises. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 5^.

This work is intended to supply the pupil with an easy construing book ,
which may at the same time be made the vehicle for instructing him in the
rules of grammar and principles of composition. The notes profess to
teach what is commonly taught in grammars. It is conceived that the
pupil will learn the rules of construction of the language much more
easily from separate examples , which are pointed out to kim in the course
of his reading, and which he may himself set down in his notebook after
some scheme of his own, than from a heap of quotations amassed for him
by others.

Or, separately,

SEVEN KINGS OF ROME. 3*

VOCABULARY AND EXERCISES TO “THE SEVEN KINGS.
2s. 6d.

CLASSICAL.

1 1

CLASSIC VERSIONS OF ENGLISH BOOKS,
AND LATIN HYMNS.

The following works are, as the heading indicates,
classic renderings of English books. For scholars, and
particularly for writers of Latin Verse, the series has a
special value. The Hymni Ecclesise are here inserted, as
partly falling under the same class.

Church (A. J., A.M.)— hor^e tennysonian^e, sive

Eclogae e Tennysono. Latine redditae. Cura A. J. Church,
A.M. Extra fcap, 8vo. 6s.

Latin versions of Selections from Tennyson. Among the authors are
the Editor , the late Professor Conington , Professor Seeley , Dr. Hessey ,
Mr. K ebb el^ and other gentlemen.

Latham. — SERTUM SHAKSPERIANUM, Subnexis aliquot
aliunde excerptis floribus. Latine reddidit Rev. H. Latham, M. A.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 5^.

Besides versions of Shaksp ear e this volume contains , among other pieces ,
Grafs “Elegy,” Campbell1 s “ Hohenlinden,” Wolf Is “ Burial of Sir
John Moore f and selections from Cowper and George Herbert.

Lyttelton. — THE COMUS OF MILTON, rendered into Greek
Verse. By Lord Lyttelton. Extra fcap. 8vo. £r.

THE SAMSON AGONISTES OF MILTON, rendered into Greek
Verse. By Lord Lyttelton. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6 d.

Merivale. — KEATS’ HYPERION, rendered into Latin Verse.
By C. Merivale, B.D. Second Edit. Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Hymni Kcclesise. — Edited by Rev. Dr. Newman. Extra
fcap. 8vo. *js. 6d.

Hymns of the Mediceval Church . The first Part contains selections
from the Parisian Breviary ; the second from those of Rome , Salisbury ,
and York .

Trench (Archbishop). — SACRED LATIN POETRY,
chiefly Lyrical, selected and arranged for Use j with Notes and
Introduction. Fcap. 8vo. 7 s.

In this work the editor has selected hymns of a catholic religious
sentiment that are common to Christendom , while rejecting those of a
distinctively Romish character \

MA THEM A TICS.

MATHEMATICS.

Airy. — Works by G. B. AIRY, Astronomer Royal : —

ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL
EQUATIONS. Designed for the Use of Students in the Univer-
sities. With Diagrams. Crown 8vo. cloth. $s. 6d.

It is hoped that the methods of solution here explained, , and the instances
exhibited, will be found sufficient for application to nearly all the important
problems of Physical Science, which require for their complete investigation
the aia of Partial Differential Equations .

ON THE ALGEBRAICAL AND NUMERICAL THEORY OF
ERRORS OF OBSERVATIONS AND THE COMBINA-
TION OF OBSERVATIONS. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s. 6d.

In order to spare astronomers and observers in natural philosophy the
confusion and loss of time which are produced by referring to the ordinary
treatises embracing both branches of probabilities ( the first relating to
chances which can be altered only by the changes of entire units or in-
tegral multiples of units in the fundamental conditions of the problem ;
the other concerning those chances which have respect to insensible grada-
tions in the value of the element measured) the present tract has been drawn
up . It relates only to errors of observation , and to the rules, derivable
from the consideration of these errors , for the combination of the results
of observations .

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS .

Airy (G. B.) — continued .

UNDULATORY THEORY OF OPTICS. Designed for the Use of
Students in the University. New Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth.
6s. 6d.

The undulatory theory of optics is presented to the reader as having the
same claims to his attention as the theory of gravitation : namely , that it is
certainly true , and that , by mathematical operations of general elegance , it
leads to results of great interest . This theory explains with accuracy a

vast variety of phenomena of the most complicated kind. The plan of this
tract has been to include those phenomena only which admit of calculation ,
and the investigations are applied only to phenomena which actually have
been observed.

ON SOUND AND ATMOSPHERIC VIBRATIONS. With the
Mathematical Elements of Music. Designed for the Use of Students
of the University. Crown 8vo. gs.

This volume consists of sections , which again are divided into numbered
articles , on the following topics : General recognition of the air as the
medium which conveys sound ; Properties of the air on which the forma-
tion and transmission of sound depend ; Theory of undulations as applied
to sound, , &°c. ; Investigation of the motion of a wave of air through the
atmosphere ; Transmission of waves of soniferous vibrations through dif-
jerent gases , solids , and fluids ; Experiments on the velocity of sound ,
&c. ; On musical sounds, and the manner of producing them ; On the
elements of musical harmony and melody , and of simple musical composi-
tion ; On instrumental music ; On the human organs of speech and
hearing.

A TREATISE ON MAGNETISM. Designed for the use of
Students in the University. Crown 8vo. 9^. 6d.

Airy (Osmund.) — a TREATISE ON GEOMETRICAL
OPTICS. Adapted for the use of the Higher Classes in Schools.
By Osmund Airy, B.A., one of the Mathematical Masters in
Wellington College. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d.

“ This is , I imagine , the first time that any attempt has been made to
adapt the subject of Geometrical Optics , to the reading of the higher
classes in our good schools. Thai this should be so is the moire a matter

MA THEM A TICS.

tor remark, since the subject would appear to be peculiarly fitted for such

an adaptation I have endeavoured, as much as possible, to avoid

the example of those popular lecturers who explain difficulties by ignoring
them. But as the nature of my design necessitated brevity, I have omitted
entirely one or two portions of the subject which I considered unnecessary
to a clear understanding of the rest, and which appear to me better learnt
at a more advanced stage” — Author’s Preface.

Bayma.— THE ELEMENTS OF MOLECULAR MECHA-
N!CS. By Joseph Bayma, S.J., Professor of Philosophy,
Stony hurst College. Demy 8vo. cloth, jo s. 6d.

Of the twelve Books into which the present treatise is divided , the first
and second give the demonstration of the principles which bear directly on
the constitution and the properties of matter. The next three books contain
a series of theorems and of problems on the laws oj motion of elementary
substances . In the sixth and seventh , the mechanical constitution of mole-
cules is investigated and determined: and by it the general properties of
bodies are explained. The eighth book treats of luminiferous cether. The
ninth explains some special properties of bodies. The tenth and eleventh
contain a radical and lengthy investigation of chemical principles and
relations , which may lead to practical results of high importance. The
twelfth and last book treats of molecular masses , distances , and powers.

Beasley.— an elementary treatise on plane

TRIGONOMETRY. With Examples. By R. D. Beasley,
M. A., Head Master of Grantham Grammar School. Second
Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo. cloth. 3^. 6d.

This treatise is specially intended for use in schools. The choice of matter
has been chiefly guided by the requirements of the three days ’ examination
at Cambridge. A bout four hundred examples have been added to this edition ,
mainly collected from the Examination Papers of the last ten years.

Boole. — Works by G. BOOLE, D.C.L., F.R.S., Professor of
Mathematics in the Queen’s University, Ireland.

A TREATISE ON DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS. New and
Revised Edition. Edited by I. Todhunter. Crown Svo. cloth.

14 s.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Boole (G., D.C.L.) — continued .

Professor Boole has endeavoured in this treatise to convey as complete an
account of the present state of knowledge on the subject of Differential Equa-
tions, as was consistent with the idea of a work intended , primarily , for
elementary instruction . The earlier sections of each chapter contain that
kind of matter which has usually been thought suitable for the beginner ,
while the latter ones are devoted either to an account of recent discovery , or
the discussion of such deeper questions of principle as are likely to present
themselves to the reflective student in connexion with the methods and
processes op his previous course.

A TREATISE ON DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS. Supple-

mentary Volume. Edited by I. Todhunter. Crown 8vo. cloth.

8s. 6d.

This volume contains all that Professor Boole wrote for the purpose ot
enlarging his treatise on Differential Equations.

THE CALCULUS OF FINITE DIFFERENCES. Crown 8vo.

cloth. ioj. 6d.

In this exposition of the Calcidus of Finite Differences, particular attention
has been paid to the connexion of its methods with those of the Differential
Calculus — a connexion which in some instances involves far more than a
merely formal analogy. The work is in some measure designed as a
sequel to Professor Boole's Treatise on Differential Equations.
CAMBRIDGE SENATE-HOUSE PROBLEMS AND RIDERS,

WITH SOLUTIONS

1848-1851. — PROBLEMS. By Ferrers and Jackson. 8vo.
cloth. i$s. 6d.

1848-1851.— RIDERS. By Jameson. 8vo. cloth. 7 s. 6d.

1854. — PROBLEMS AND RIDERS. By Walton and

Mackenzie. 8vo. cloth, iqj. 6d.

1857. — PROBLEMS AND RIDERS. By Campion and

Walton. 8vo. cloth. 8s. 6d.

i860. — PROBLEMS AND RIDERS. By Watson and Routh.
Crown 8vo. cloth. Js. 6d.

1864. — PROBLEMS AND RIDERS. By Walton and Wil-
kinson. 8vo. cloth. ioj\ 6d.

MA THEM A TICS.

Boole (G., D.C.L.) — continued ’

These volumes will be found of great value to Teachers and Students , as
indicating the style and range of mathematical study in the University of
Cambridge .

CAMBRIDGE COURSE OF ELEMENTARY NATURAL
PHILOSOPHY, for the Degree of B. A. Originally compiled by
J. C. Snowball, M.A., late Fellow of St. John’s College.
Fifth Edition, revised and enlarged, and adapted for the Middle-
Class Examinations by Thomas Lund, B.D., Late Fellow and
Lecturer of St. John’s College, Editor of Wood’s Algebra, &c.
Crown 8vo. cloth. 5 s.

This work will be found adapted to the wants , not only of University
Students , but also of many others who require a short course of Mechanics
and Hydrostatics , and especially of the candidates at our Middle Class
Examinations . At the end of each chapter a series of easy questions is
added for the exercise of the student,

CAMBRIDGE AND DUBLIN MATHEMATICAL JOURNAL.
The Complete Work, in Nine Vols. 8vo. cloth, 7/. 4 s.

Only a few copies remain on hand. Among Contributors to this
work will be found Sir W. Thomson , Stokes , Adams , Boole , Sir IV. R.
Hamilton , De Morgan , Cayley , Sylvester , Jellett , and other distinguished
mathematicians.

Candler. — HELP TO ARITHMETIC. Designed for the use of
Schools. By H. Candler, M.A. Mathematical Master of
Uppingham School. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2 s. 6d.

This work is intended as a companion to any text book that may be
in use.

Cheyne.— AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE
PLANETARY THEORY. With a Collection of Problems.
By C. H. H. Cheyne, M. A. , F. R. A. S. Second Edition. Crown
8vo. cloth 6s. 6d.

In this volume, an attempt has been made to produce a treatise on the
Planetary theory , which, being elementary in character, should be so far
complete, as to contain all that is usually required by students in flu
University of Cambridge. This Edition has been carefully revised. I he

stability of the Planetary System has been more fully treated, and an

1 8

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Cheyne (C. H. H., M.A. F.R.A.S.) — continued ’

elegant geometrical explanation of the formulce for the secular variation of
the node and inclination , due to Mr. H M. Taylor , has been introduced.

THE EARTH’S MOTION OF ROTATION. By C. U. H.
Cheyne, M.A,, F.R.A.S. Crown 8vo. 3J. 6d.

The first part of this work consists of an application of the method of the
variation of elements to the general problem of rotation. In the second
part the general rotation formula (ire applied to the particular case op
the earth.

Childe. — THE SINGULAR PROPERTIES OF THE ELLIP-
SOID AND ASSOCIATED SURFACES OF THE Nth
DEGREE. By the Rev. G. F. Childe, M.A., Author of
“Ray Surfaces,” “Related Caustics,” &c. 8vo. ior. 6 d.

The object op this volume is to develop peculiarities in the Ellipsoid ;
and, further , to establish analogous properties in the unlimited congeneric
series of which this remarkable surface is a constituent.

Christie. — A COLLECTION OF ELEMENTARY TEST-
QUESTIONS IN PURE AND MIXED MATHEMATICS ;
with Answers and Appendices on Synthetic Division, and on the
Solution of Numerical Equations by Horner’s Method. By James
R. Christie, F. R.S., late First Mathematical Master at the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Crown 8vo. cloth. 8s. 6d.

The series of Mathematical exercises here offered to the public is collected
from those which the author has, from time to time, proposed for solution
by his pupils during a long career at the Royal Military Academy. A
student who finds that he is able to solve the larger portion of these exercises,
may consider that he is thoroughly well grounded in the elementary prin-
ciples of pure and mixed Mathematics .

Dalton. — ARITHMETICAL EXAMPLES. Progressively
arranged, with Exercises and Examination Papers. By the Rev.
T. Dalton, M.A., Assistant Master of Eton College. i8mo.
cloth. 2s. 6d. Answers to the Examples are appended.

MA THEM A TICS.

Day— PROPERTIES OF CONIC SECTIONS PROVED
GEOMETRICALLY. PART I., THE ELLIPSE, with
Problems. By the Rev. H. G. Day, M.A., Head Master of
Sedburgh Grammar School. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d.

The object of this book is the introduction of a treatment of Conic
Sections which should be simple and natural , and lead by an easy transi-
tion to the analytical methods , without departing from the strict geometry
of Euclid .

Dodgson. — AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON DETER-
MIN ANTS, with their Application to Simultaneous Linear
Equations and Algebraical Geometry. By Charles L Dodgson,
M.A., Student and Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church
Oxford. Small 4to. cloth, icxt. 6d.

The object of the author is to present the subject as a continuous chain of
argument , separated from all accessories of explanation or illustration.
All such explanation and illustration as seemed necessary for a beginner
are introduced either in the form of foot-notes , or, zuhere that would have
occupied too much room , of A ppendices.

Drew. — GEOMETRICAL TREATISE ON CONIC SEC-
TXONS. By W. H. Drew, M. A., St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth. 4^. 6d.

In this work the subject of Conic Sections has been placed before the student
in such a form that, it is hoped, after mastering the elements of Euclid, he
may find it an easy and interesting continuation of his geometrical studies .
With a view , also, of rendering the work a complete manual of what is
required at the Universities, there have either been embodied into the text or
inserted among the examples, every book-work question, problem, and rider ,
which has been proposed in the Cambridge examinations up to the present
time .

SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS IN DREW’S CONIC
SECTIONS. Crown 8vo. cloth. 4 r. 6d.

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EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Edgar (J. H.) — NOTE-BOOK ON PRACTICAL SOLID
GEOMETRY. Containing Problems with help for Solutions. By
J. H. Edgar, M.A. Lecturer on Mechanical Drawing at the
Royal School of Mines. 4to. 2s.

In teaching a large class , if the method of lecturing and demonstrating
from the black board only is pursued , the more intelligent students have
generally to be kept back , from the necessity of frequent repetition , for the
sake of the less promising; if the plan of setting problems to each pupil is
adopted, the teacher finds a difficulty in giving to each sufficient attention.
A judicious combination of both methods is doubtless the best ; and it is
hoped that this result may be arrived at in some degree by the use of this
book, which is simply a collection of examples , with helps for solution ,
arranged in progressive sections.

Ferrers. — AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON TRILINEAR
CO-ORDINATES, the Method of Reciprocal Polars, and the
Theory of Projectors. By the Rev* N. M. Ferrers, M.A., Fellow
and Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.

The object of the author in writing on this subject has mainly been to
place it on a basis altogether independent of the ordinary Cartesian system ,
instead of regarding it as only a special form of Abridged Notation .
A short chapter on Determinants has been introduced.

Frost. — THE FIRST THREE SECTIONS OF NEWTON’S
PRINCIPIA. With Notes and Illustrations. Also a collection of
Problems, principally intended as Examples of Newton’s Methods.
By Percival Frost, M.A., late Fellow of St. John’s College,
Mathematical Lecturer of King’s College, Cambridge. Second
Edition. 8vo. cloth, iqj-. 6d .

The author's pi incipal intention is to explain difficulties which may be
encountered by the student on first reading the Principia, and to illustrate
the advantages of a careful study of the methods employed by Newton, by
showing the extent to which they may be applied in the solution of problems ;

MATHEMATICS.

he has also endeavoured to give assistance to the studeiit who is engaged in
the study of the higher branches of mathematics , by representing in a
geometrical form several op the processes employed in the Differeiitial ana
Integral Calculus , and in the analytical investigations of Dynamics.

Frost and Wolstenholme.— a treatise on solid

GEOMETRY. By Percival Frost, M.A., and the Rev. J.
Wolstenholme, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Christ’s
College. 8vo. cloth, i&r.

The authors have endeavoured to present before students as comprehensive
a view of the subject as possible. Intending to inake the subject accessible,
at least in the earlier portion, to all classes of students , they have endea-
voured to explain completely all the processes which are most usefid in
dealing with ordinary theorems and problems, thus directing the student
to the selection of methods which are best adapted to the exige7icies of each
proble7n. In the more difficult portions of the subject, they have considei'ed
themselves to be addressmg a higher class op stude7its ; and they have there
tried to lay a good foundation on which to build, if any reader should
wish to pursue the science beyond the limits to which the work exte7ids.

Godfray. — A TREATISE ON ASTRONOMY, for the Use of
Colleges and Schools. By Hugh Godfray, M.A., Mathematical
Lecturer at Pembroke College, Cambridge. 8vo. cloth. 12 s. 6 d.

This book embraces all those branches of Astronomy which have, from
time to time, been recommended by the Cambridge Board of Mathematical
Studies : but by far the larger and easier portion, adapted to the first three
days of the Examination for Ho7iours, may be read by the more
advanced pupils in many of our schools. The author s aim has been to
convey clear and distinct ideas of the celestial phenomena.

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE LUNAR THEORY,
with a Brief Sketch of the Problem up to the time of Newton.
By Hugh Godfray, M.A. Second Edition, revised. Crown
8vo. cloth. 5J. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

These pages will , it is hopedy form an mtroduction to more recondite
works. Difficulties have been - discussed at considerable length. The
selection of the method followed with regard to analytical solutions ,
which is the same as that of Airy , Herschel , &*c. was made on account
of its simplicity ; it is , moreover , the method which has obtained in the
University of Ca?nbridge.

Hemming.— AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE
DIFFERENTIAL AND INTEGRAL CALCULUS, for the
Use of Colleges and Schools. By G. W. Hemming, M.A.,
Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Second Edition, with
Corrections and Additions. 8vo. cloth. 9^.

Jones and Cheyne. — ALGEBRAICAL EXERCISES. Pro-
gressively arranged. By the Rev. C. A. Jones, M.A., and C. H.
Cheyne, M.A., F.R.A.S., Mathematical Masters of Westminster
School. New Edition. i8mo. cloth. 2s. 6d.

This little book is intended to meet a difficulty which is probably felt more
or less by all engaged in teaching Algebra to beginners. It is , that while
new ideas are being acquired , old ones are forgotten. In the belief that
constant practice is the only remedy for this , the present series of miscel-
laneous exercises has been prepared. Their peculiarity consists in this ,
that though miscellaneous they are yet progressive , and may be used by
the pupil almost fro?n the commencement of his studies. They are not
mtended to supersede the systematically arranged examples to be found in
ordinary treatises on Algebra , but rather to supplement them.

The book being intended chiefly for Schools and Junior Students , the
higher parts of Algebra hdtVe not been included.

Kitchener.— A GEOMETRICAL NOTE-BOOIC, containing
Easy Problems in Geometrical Drawing preparatory to the Study
of Geometry. For the Use of Schools. By F. E. Kitchener,
M.A., Mathematical Master at Rugby. 4to. 2s.

M A THEM A TICS.

It is the object of this book to make some way in overcoming the difficulties
of Geometrical conception , before the mind is called to the attack of
Geometrical, theorems . A few simple methods of construction are given /
and space is left on each page, t in order that the learner may draw in the
figures .

Morgan.— A COLLECTION OF PROBLEMS AND EXAM-
PLES IN MATHEMATICS. With Answers. By H. A.
Morgan, M.A., Sadlerian and Mathematical Lecturer of Jesus
College, Cambridge. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s. 6d.

This book contains a number of problems, chiefly elementary , in the
Mathematical subjects usually read at Cambridge. They have been
selected from the papers set during late years at Jesus College. Very few

of them are to be met with in other collections , and by far the larger
number are due to some of the most distinguished Mathematicians in the
University.

Parkinson.— Works by S. Parkinson, D.D., F.R.S., Fellow and
Tutor of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON MECHANICS. For the
Use of the Junior Classes at the University and the Higher Classes
in Schools. With a Collection of Examples. Fourth edition, revised.
Crown 8vo. cloth. 9^. 6d.

In preparing a fourth edition of this work the author has kept the same
object in view as he had in the former editions — namely , to include in it
such portions of Theoretical Mechanics as can be conveniently investigated
without the use of the Differential Calculus , and so render it suitable as
a manual for the junior classes in the University and the higher classes
in Schools. With one or two short exceptions > the student is not presumed
to require a knowledge of any branches of Mathematics beyond the elements
of Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry. Several additional propositions
have been incorporated in the work for the purpose of rendering it more
complete ; and the collection of Examples and Problems has been largely
increased. .

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS .

Parkinson (S.) — continued.

A TREATISE ON OPTICS, Third Edition, revised and enlarged.
Crown 8vo. cloth, io.r. 6d.

A collection of examples and proble7?is has been appended to this work ,
which are sufficiently numerous and varied in character to afford useful
exercise for the student. For the greater part of them, recourse has been
had to the Examination Papers set in the University and the several
Colleges during the last twenty years.

Phear. — ELEMENTARY HYDROSTATICS. With Numerous
Examples. By J. B. Phear, M.A., Fellow and late Assistant
Tutor of Clare College, Cambridge. Fourth Edition. Crown
8vo. cloth. $s. 6d.

This edition has been carefully revised throughout , and many new
illustrations and examples added, which it is hoped will increase its
usefulness to students at the Universities and in Schools. Pi accordance
with suggestions from many engaged in tuition, answers to all the
Examples have been given at the end of the book.

Pratt. — A TREATISE ON ATTRACTIONS, LAPLACE’S
FUNCTIONS, AND THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.
By John H. Pratt* M.A., Archdeacon of Calcutta, Author of
“ The Mathematical Principles of Mechanical Philosophy.” Third
Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s. 6d.

The author's chief design in this treatise is to give an answer to the
question, “ Has the E.arth acquired its present form from being originally
in a fluid state 1 ” This Edition is a complete revision of the former ones.

Puckle. — AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON CONIC SEC-
TIONS AND ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY. With Numerous
Examples and Hints for their Solution ; especially designed for the
Use of Beginners. By G. H. Puckle, M.A., Head Master of
Windermere College. New Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown
8vo. cloth. 7 s. 6d.

M A THEM A TICS.

Ibis work is recommended by the Syndicate of the Cambridge Local
Examinations , and is the text-book m Harvard University , U.S.

Rawlinson.— ELEMENTARY STATICS, by the Rev. George
Rawlinson, M. A. Edited by the Rev. Edward Sturges, M. A. ,
of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and late Professor of the Applied
Sciences, Elphinstone College, Bombay. Crown 8vo. cloth. 4 s. 6d.

Published under the authority of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for
India , for use in the Government Schools and Colleges in India.

Reynolds. — modern methods in elementary

GEOMETRY. By E. M. Reynolds, M.A., Mathematical
Master in Clifton College. Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d.

Some change, it is evident , in our English ways of teaching can now no
longer be postponed ', and this little book , mainly derived from French and
German sources , has been written in the hope of facilitating that change.
It has been constructed on one plan throughout , that of always giving in
the simplest possible form the direct proof from the nature of the case. The
axioms necessary to this simplicity have been assumed without hesitation ,
and no scruple has been felt as to the increase of their number, or the
acceptance of as many elementary notions as common experience places
past all doubt.

The book differs most from established teaching in its constructions , and
in its early application of Arithmetic to Geometry.

Routh. — AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE DYNA-
MICS OF THE SYSTEM OF RIGID BODIES. With
Numerous Examples. By Edward John Routh, M.A., late
Fellow and Assistant Tutor of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge;
Examiner in. the University of London. Second Edition, enlarged.
Crown 8vo. cloth. 14 s.

2 6

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

In this edition the author has made several additions to each chapter.
He has tried, , even at the risk of some little repetition , to make each
chapter , as far as possible , complete in itself, \ so that all that relates to any
one part of the subject may be found in the same place. This arrangement
will enable every student to select his own order in which to read the
subject. The Examples which will be pound at the end of each chapter
have been chiefly selected from the Examination Papers which have been
set in the University and the Colleges in the last few years.

Smith (Barnard). — Works by BARNARD SMITH, M.A.,
Rector of Glaston, Rutlandshire, late Fellow and Senior Bursar
of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge.

ARITHMETIC AND ALGEBRA, in their Principles and Applica-
tion ; with numerous systematically arranged Examples taken from
the Cambridge Examination Papers, with especial reference to the
Ordinary Examination for the B.A. Degree. Tenth Edition.
Crown 8vo. cloth. lets'. 6d.

This manual is now extensively used in Schools and Colleges , both in
England and in the Colonies. It has also been pound of great service for
students preparing for the Middle Class and Civil and Military Service
Examinations , from the care that has been taken to elucidate the principles
of all the rules. The present edition has been carefully revised. “ To
all those whose minds are sufficiently developed to comprehend the simplest
mathematical reasoning , and who have not yet thoroughly mastered the
principles of Arithmetic and Algebra , it is calculated to be of great
advantage .” — Athenaeum.

Of this work , also, one of the highest possible authorities , the late Dean
Peacock , writes : “Mr. Smith's work is a most useful publication. The
rules are stated with great clearness. The examples are well selected , and
worked out with just sufficient detail , without being encumbered by too
minute explanations ; and there prevails throughout it that just proportion
op theory and practice , v thick is the crowning excellence of an elementary
work .”

MA THEM A TICS.

Smith (Barnard) — continued.

ARITHMETIC FOR SCHOOLS. New Edition. Crown Svo.
cloth. 4 S. 6d.

Adapted from the author's work on " Arithmetic and Algebra f by the
omission of the algebraic portion , and by the introduction of new exercises.
The reason of each arithmetical process is fully exhibited. The system of
Decimal Coinage is explained y and answers to the exercises are appended
at the end. This Arithmetic is characterised as “ admirably adapted for
instruction , combining just sufficient theory with a large and well-selected
collection of exercises for practice — Journal of Education.

COMPANION TO ARITHMETIC FOR SCHOOLS.

[Preparing.

A KEY TO THE ARITHMETIC FOR SCHOOLS. Seventh
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TiXERCIS ES IN ARITHMETIC. With Answers. Crown 8vo. limp
cloth. 2s. 6d.

Or sold separately, Part I. is. $ Part II. is. ; Answers, 6d.

These Exercises have been published in order to give the pupil examples
in every rule of Arithmetic. The greater number have been carefully
compiled from the latest University and School Examination Papers .

SCHOOL CLASS-BOOK OF ARITHMETIC. i8mo. cloth. 3*.
Or sold separately, Parts I. and II. 10^. each ; Part III. Is.

This manual , published at the request of many schoolmasters , and
chiefly intended for National and Elementary Schools , has been prepared
on the same plan as that adopted in the author* s School Arithmetic , which
is in extensive circulation in England and abroad. The Metrical Tables
have been introduced , from the conviction on the part of the authoi , that
the knoivledge of such tables , and the mode of applying them , will be of
great use to the rising generation.

KEYS TO SCHOOL CLASS-BOOK OF ARITHMETIC. Com-
plete in one volume, i8mo. cloth, 6s. 6d. ; or Parts I. II. and III.
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Smith (Barnard) — continued.

SHILLING BOOK OF ARITHMETIC FOR NATIONAL AND
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Part I. 2 d. ; Part II. 3d. ; Part III. 7 d. Answers, 6d.

THE SAME, with Answers complete. x8mo. cloth, is. 6d.

This Shilling Book of Arithmetic has been prepared for the use op
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schools both at home and abroad. The Explanations op the Rules , and
the Examples ’will , it is hoped , be found suited to the most elementary
classes.

KEY TO SHILLING BOOK OF ARITHMETIC. i8mo. cloth.

4^. 6d.

EXAMINATION PAPERS IN ARITHMETIC. i8mo. cloth.
is. 6d. The same, with Answers, i8mo. ij'. 9 d.

The object of these Examination Papers is to test students both in the
theoiy and practice of Arithmetic. It is hoped that the method adopted
will lead students to deduce results from general principles rather than
to apply stated rules. The author believes that the practice of giving
examples under particular rules makes the working op Arithmetic quite
mechanical , and tends to throw all but very clever boys off their balance
when a general paper on the subject is put before them.

KEY TO EXAMINATION PAPERS IN ARITHMETIC.
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Smith (J. Brook). — arithmetic in theory and

PRACTICE, FOR ADVANCED PUPILS. By J. Brook
Smith, M.A. Part I. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

The following pages form the first part of a Treatise on Arithmetic , in
which the Author has endeavoured from very simple principles to explain ,
in a full and satisfactory manner , all the more important processes in
that subject. The proofs have in all cases been given in a form entirely

MA THEM A TICS .

arithmetical , at the end of every chapter several examples have been

worked out at length , best practical method of operation carefully

pointed out

Snowball — the elements of plane and sphere

CAL TRIGONOMETRY ; with the Construction and Use of
Tables of Logarithms. By J. C. Snowball, M.A. Tenth Edition.
Crown 8vo. cloth. 7 s. 6d.

In preparing the present edition for the press , the text has been
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considerable addition of more than two hundred examples , taken princi-
pally from the questions set of late years in the public examinations of the
University and of individual Colleges , has been made to the collection oj
Examples and Problems for practice .

Tait and Steele.— a TREATISE ON DYNAMICS OF A
PARTICLE. With numerous Examples. By Professor Tait and
Mr. Steele. New Edition Enlarged. Crown 8vo. cloth, iol 6d.

In this treatise will be found all the ordinary propositions , connected
with the Dynamics of Particles , which can be conveniently deduced without
the use of D' Alembert' s Principle. Throughout the book will be found a
number of illustrative examples introduced in the text , and for the most
part completely worked out ; others with occasional solutions or hints to
assist the student are appended to each chapter . For by far the greater
portion of these , the Cambridge Senate-House and College Examination
Papers have been applied to.

Taylor. — GEOMETRICAL CONICS; including Anharmonic
Ratio and Projection, with numerous Examples. By C. Taylor,
B. A., Scholar of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Crown 8vo. cloth.

7 s. 6d.

This work contains elementary proof s of the principal properties of Conic
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3°

Tebay.— ELEMENTARY MENSURATION FOR SCHOOLS.
With numerous Examples. By Septimus Tebay, B.A., Head
Master of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Rivington. Extra
fcap. 8 vo. 3J-. 6d.

The object of the present work is to enable boys to acquire a moderate
knowledge of Mensuration in a reasonable time. All difficult and useless
matter has been avoided. The examples for the most part are easy , and
the rides are concise.

Todhunter.— Works by I. TODHUNTER, M.A., F.R.S.,
of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID. For the Use of Colleges and
Schools. New Edition. i8mo. cloth. 3*. 6d.

As the elements of Euclid are usually placed in the hands of young
students , it is important to exhibit the work in such a form as will assist
them in overcoming the difficulties which they experience on their first in -
troduciion to processes of continuous argument . No method appears to be
so useful as that of breaking up the demonstrations into their constituent
parts ; a plan strongly recommended by Professor De Morgan . In the
present Edition each distinct assertion in the argument begins a new line ;
and at the ends of the lines are placed the necessary references to the
preceding principles on which the assertions depend. The longer proposi-
tions are distributed into subordinate parts , which are distinguished by
breaks at the beginning of the lines. Notes , appendix , and a collection of
exercises are added .

MENSURATION FOR BEGINNERS. With Numerous Examples.
i8mo. cloth. 2s. 6d.

The subjects included in the present work are those which have usually
found a place in Elementally Treatises on Mensuration. The mode of
treatment has been determined by the fact that the work is intended for the
use of beginners. Accordingly it is divided into short independent chapters ,
which are followed by appropriate examples . A knowledge of the elements
of Arithmetic is all that is assumed; and in connexion with most of the
Rules of Mensuration it has been found practicable to give such explana-
tions and illustrations as will supply the place of formal mathematical

MATHEMATICS.

Todhunter (I.) — continued.

demonstrations , which would have been unsuitable to the character of the
work.

ALGEBRA FOR BEGINNERS. With numerous Examples. New
Edition. i8mo. cloth. 2 s. 6d.

Great pains have been taken to render this work intelligible to young
students , by the use of simple language and by copious explanations, hi
determining the subjects to be included and the space to be assigned to each ,
the Author has been guided by the papers given at the various examinations
in elementary Algebra which are now carried on in this country. The
book may be said to consist of three parts. The first part contains the
elementary operations in integral and fractional expressions ; the second
the solution of equations and problems ; the third treats of various subjects
which are introduced but rarely into examination papers , and are more
briefly discussed. Provision has at the same time been made for the
introduction of easy equations and problems at an early stage— for those
who prefer such a course.

KEY TO ALGEBRA FOR BEGINNERS. Crown 8vo. cloth.
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TRIGONOMETRY FOR BEGINNERS. With numerous Examples.
New Edition. i8mo. cloth, 'is. 6 d.

Intended to serve as an introduction to the larger treatise on Plane
Trigonometry, published by the Author. The same plan has been adopted
as in the Algebra for Beginners : the subject is discussed in short chapters ,
and a collection of examples is attached to each chapter. The first fourteen
chapters present the geometrical part of Plane Trigonometry ; and contain
all that is necessary for practical purposes. The range of matter included
is such as seems required by the various examinations in elementary Tri-
gonometry whTh are now carried on in the country. A nswers are appended
at the end.

MECHANICS FOR BEGINNERS. With numerous Examples.
Second Edition. i8mo. cloth. 4 j. 6d.

Intended as a companion to the two preceding books. The work forms
an elementary treatise on demonstrative mechanics. It may be true that
this part of mixed mathematics has been sometimes made too abstract and
speculative; but it can hardly be doubted that a knowledge of the elements

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Todhunter (I.) — continued.

at least of the theory of the subject is extremely valuable even for those
who are mainly concerned with practical results. The Author has accord-
ingly endeavoured to provide a suitable introduction to the study of applied
as well as of theoretical mechanics. The work consists of two parts,
namely, Statics and Dynamics. It will be found to contain all that is
usually comprised in elementary treatises on Mechanics, together with some
additions .

ALGEBRA. For the Use of Colleges and Schools. Fifth Edition.

Crown 8 vo. cloth. *]s. 6d.

This work contains all the propositions which are usually included in
elementary treatises on Algebra , and a large number of Examples for
Exercise. The author has sought to render the work easily intelligible to
students, without impairing the accuracy of the demonstrations, or con-
tracting the limits of the subject. The Examples, about Sixteen hundred
and fifty in number, have been selected with a view to illustrate every part
of the subject. Each chapter is complete in itself; and the work will be
found peculiarly adapted to the wants of students who are without the aid
of a teacher. The Answers to the exa7nples , with hints for the solution of
some in which assistance may be needed , are given at the end of the book.
In the present edition two New Chapters and Three hundred miscellaneous
Examples have been added. The latter are arranged in sets, each set
containing ten examples.

KEY TO ALGEBRA FOR THE USE OF COLLEGES AND
SCHOOLS. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d.

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE THEORY OF
EQUATIONS. Second Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. cloth.
*]s. 6d.

This treatise contains all the propositions which are usually included
in elementary treatises on the theory of Equations, together with Examples
for exercise These have been selected from the College and University
Examination > Papers, and the results have been given when it appeared
necessary. In order to exhibit a comprehensive view of the subject, the
treatise includes mvestigations which are not found in all the preceding
elementary treatises, and also some mvestigations which are not to be found
in any of them. For the second edition the work has been revised and

M A THEM A TICS.

Todhunter (I.) • — continued.

some additions have been made, the most important being an account of
the researches of Professor Sylvester respecting Newton! s Rule.

PLANE TRIGONOMETRY. For Schools and Colleges. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth. 5 s.

The design of this work has been to render the subject intelligible to
beginners , and at the same time to afford the student the opportunity of
obtaining all the information which he will require on this branch of
Mathematics . Each chapter is followed by a set of Examples : those
which are entitled Miscellaneous Examples, together with a few in some
of the other sets, may be advantageously reserved by the student for exercise
after he has made some progress in the subject. In the Second Edition
the hints for the solution of the Examples have been considerably increased .

A TREATISE ON SPHERICAL TRIGONOMETRY. Second
Edition, enlarged. Crown 8vo. cloth. 4^. 6d.

The present work is constructed on the same plan as the treatise on
Plane Trigonometry, to which it is intended as a. sequel. In the account
of Napier’s Rules of Circular Parts, an explanation has been given of a
method of proof devised by Napier, which seems to have been overlooked
by most modern writers on the subject. Considerable labour has been
bestowed on the text in order to render it (comprehensive and accurate, and
the Examples ( selected chiefly from. College Examination Papers) have
all been carefully verified.

PLANE CO-ORDINATE GEOMETRY, as applied to the Straight
Line and the Conic Sections. With numerous Examples. Fourth
Edition, revised ajid enlarged. Crown 8vo. cloth, Js. 6d.

The Author has here endeavoured to exhibit the subject in a simple
manner for the benefit of beginners, and at the same time to include in one
volume all that students usually require. In addition, therefore, to the
propositions which have always, appeared in such treatises , he has intro-
duced the methods of abridged notation, which are of more recent origin ;
these methods, which are of a less elementary character than the rest of the
work , are placed'* n separate chapters , and may be omitted by the student
at first.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Todhunter (I.) — continued .

A TREATISE ON THE DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS. With
numerous Examples. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth, ioj. 6d.

The Author has endeavoured in the present work to exhibit a compre-
hensive view of the Differential Calculus on the method of limits. In the
more elementary portions he has entered into considerable detail in the
explanations , with the hope that a reader who is without the assistance of a
tutor may be enabled to acquire a competent acquaintance with the subject.
The method adopted is that of Differential Coefficients. To the different
chapters are appended examples sufficiently numerous to render another
book unnecessary ; these examples being mostly selected from College Ex-
amination Papers.

A TREATISE ON THE INTEGRAL CALCULUS AND ITS
APPLICATIONS. With numerous Examples. Third Edition,
revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo. cloth. iCtf. 6d.

This is designed as a work at once elementary and complete , adapted
for the use of beginners , and sufficient for the wants of advanced students.
In the selection of the propositions , and in the mode of establishing them,
it has been sought to exhibit the principles clearly, and to illustrate
all their most important results. The process of summation has been
repeatedly brought forward, with the view of securing the attention of
the student to the notions which form the true foundation of the Calculus
itself, as well as of its most valuable applications. Every attempt has been
made to explain those difficulties which usually perplex beginners, especially
with reference to the limits of integrations. A new method has been adopted
in regard to the transformation of multiple integrals. The last chapter
deals with the Calculus of Variations. A large collection of exercises ,
selected from College Examination Papers , has been appended to the several
chapters.

EXAMPLES OF ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY OF THREE
DIMENSIONS. Second Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. cloth 4^.

MATHEMATICS.

Tcdhunter (I.) — continued.

A TREATISE ON ANALYTICAL STATICS. With numerous
Examples. Third Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown Svo.
cloth, icw. 6d.

In this work on statics {treating of the laws of the equilibrium of bodies ),
will be found all the propositions which usually appear in treatises on
Theoretical Statics. To the different chapters examples are appended,
which have been principally selected from University Examination Papers.
In the Third Edition many additions have been made , in order to illus -
trate the application of the principles of the subject to the solution of
problems.

Wilson (J. M.) — ELEMENTARY GEOMETRY. Angles,.
Parallels, Triangles, Equivalent Figures, the Circle, and Propor-
tion. By J. M. Wilson, M.A., Fellow of St. John’s College,
Cambridge, and Mathematical Master in Rugby School. Second
Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3-f. 6 d.

The distinctive features of this work are intended to be the following.
The classification of Theorems according to their subjects ; the separation
of Theorems and Problems; the use of hypothetical constructions; the
adoption of independent proofs where they are possible and simple; the
introduction of the terms locus, projection, &c. ; the importance given to
the notion of direction as the property of a straight line; the intermixing
of exercises, classified according to the methods adopted for their solution ;
the diminution of the number of Theorems; the compression of proofs
especially in the later parts of the book ; the tacit, instead of the explicit,
reference to axioms ; and the treatment of parallels.

ELEMENTARY GEOMETRY. PART II. (separately). The
Circle and Proportion. By J. M. WILSON, M.A. Extra fcap.
8vo. 2J. 6d.

C 2

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Wilson (W. P.) — A TREATISE ON DYNAMICS. By
W. P. Wilson, M.A., Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge,
and Professor of Mathematics in Queen’s College, Belfast. 8vo.
gs \ 6d.

Wolstenholme. — A BOOK OF MATHEMATICAL
PROBLEMS, on Subjects included in the Cambridge Course.
By Joseph Wolstenholme, Fellow of Christ’s College, some-
time Fellow of St. John’s College, and lately Lecturer in Mathe-
matics at Christ’s College. Crown 8vo. cloth. 8s. 6d.

Contents: — Geometry ( Euclid ) — Algebra — Plane Trigonometry-
Geometrical Conic Sections — Analytical Conic Sections — Theory of Equa-
tions— Differential Calculus — Integral Calculus — Solid Geometry — Statics
—Elementary Dynamics — Newton — Dynamics of a Point — Dynamics of
a Rigid Body — Hydrostatics — Geometrical Optics — Spherical Trigonometry
and Plane Astronomy \

SCIENCE .

SCIENCE,

ELEMENTARY CLASS-BOOKS.

The importance of Science as an element of sound educa-
tion is now generally acknowledged; and accordingly it
is obtaining a prominent place in the ordinary course of
school instruction. It is the intention of the Publishers to
produce a complete series of Scientific Manuals, affording
full and accurate elementary information, conveyed in clear
and lucid English. The authors are well known as among
the foremost men of their several departments ; and their
names form a ready guarantee for the high character of the
books. Subjoined is a list of those Manuals that have
already appeared, with a short account of each. Others
are in active preparation ; and the whole will constitute a
standard series specially adapted to the requirements of be-
ginners, whether for private study or for school instruction.

ASTRONOMY, by the Astronomer Royal.

POPULAR ASTRONOMY. With Illustrations. By G. B.

Airy, Astronomer Royal. Sixth and cheaper Edition. i8mo.

cloth. 4s. 6d.

This work consists of six lectures, which are intended “ to explain to
intelligent persons the principles on which the instruments of an Observa-
tory are constructed ( omitting all details , so far as they are merely sub -

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Elementary Class-Books — continued.

sidiary ), and the principles on which the observations made with these
instruments are treated for deduction of the distances and weights of the
bodies of the Solar System , and of a few stars, o?nitiing all minutice of
formulce , and all troublesome details of calculation,” The speciality of this
volume is the direct reference of every step to the Observatory , and the full
description of the methods and instruments of observation .

ASTRONOMY.

MR. LOCKYER’S ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ASTRO-
NOMY. With Coloured Diagram ot the Spectra of the Sun,
Stars, and Nebulae, and numerous Illustrations. By J. Norman
Lockyer, F. R.S. Seventh Thousand. i8mo. 53*. 6d.

The author has here aimed to give a connected view of the whole subject ,
and to supply facts , and ideas founded on the facts , to serve as a basis for
subsequent study and discussion. The chapters treat of the Stars and
Nebuhe ; the Sun ; the Solar System ; Apparent Movements of the Heavenly
Bodies ; the Measurement of Time; Light ; the Telescope and Spectroscope ;
Apparent Places of the Heavenly Bodies ; the Real Distances and Dimen-
sions; Universal Gravitation. The most recent astronomical discoveries
are incorporated. Mr. Lockyef s work supplements that of the Astronomer
Royal mentioned in the previous article.

QUESTIONS ON LOCKYER’S ELEMENTARY LESSONS
IN ASTRONOMY. For the use of Schools. By John Forbes-
Robertson. i8mo. cloth limp. is. 6d.

PHYSIOLOGY.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY’S LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY
PHYSIOLOGY. With numerous Illustrations. By T. H.
Huxley, F.R.S. Professor of Natural History in the Royal School
of Mines. Sixteenth Thousand. i8mo. cloth. 4.S. 6d.

SCIENCE.

Elementary Class-Books — continued.

This book describes and explains , in a series of graduated lessons , the
principles of Human Physiology ; or the Structure and Functions of the
Human Body. The drst lesson supplies a general view of the subject.
This is followed by sections on the Vascular or Veinous System , and the
Circulation; the Blodd and the Lymph ; Respiration; Sources of Loss
and of Gain to the Blood ; the Function of Alimentation ; Motion and
Locomotion ; Sensations and Sensory Organs; the Organ of Sight ; the
Coalescence of Sensations with one another and with other States of Con-
sciousness ; the Nervous System and Lnnervation ; Histology , or the
Minute Structure of the Tissues. A Table of Anatomical and Physio-
logical Constants is appended. The lessons are fully illustrated by
numerous engravings. The manual is primarily intended to serve as a
text-book for teachers and learners in boys ’ and girls' schools.

QUESTIONS ON HUXLEY’S PHYSIOLOGY FOR SCHOOLS.
By T. Alcock, M.D. i8mo. is. 6d.

These Questions were arawn up as aids to the instruction of a class o
young people in Physiology .

BOTANY.

PROFESSOR OLIVER’S LESSONS IN ELEMENTAL Y
BOTANY. With nearly Two Hundred Illustrations. Tenth
Thousand. i8mo. cloth. 4 s. 6d.

This book is designed to teach the Elements of Botany on Professor
Henslow's plan of selected Types and by the use of Schedules. The earlier
chapters , embracing the elements of Structural and Physiological Botany,
introduce us to the methodical study of the Ordinal Types. The con-
cluding chapters are entitled, ‘ 1 How to dry Plants ” and 1 1 How to
describe Plants .” A valuable Glossary is appended to the volume. In
the preparation of this work free use has been made of the manuscript
materials of the late Professor Henslow.

EDUCA1I0NAL BOOKS.

Elementary Class-Books— continued.
CHEMISTRY.

PROFESSOR ROSCOE’S LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY
CHEMISTRY, INORGANIC AND ORGANIC. By Henry
E. Roscoe, F. R. S., Professor of Chemistry in Owens College,
Manchester. With numerous Illustrations and Chromo-Litho. of
the Solar Spectrum, and of the Alkalies and Alkaline Earths,
New Edition. Twenty-sixth Thousand. i8mo. cloth. 4 s. 6d.

It has been the endeavour of the author to arrange the most important
facts and principles of Modern Chemistry in a plain but concise and
scientific form, suited to the 'present requirements of elementary instruction.
For the purpose op facilitating the attainment of exactitude in the knowledge
of the subject , a series of exercises and questions upon the lessons have been
added. The metric system of weights and measures, and the centigrade
thermometric scale, are used throughout the work. The new Edition,
besides new wood-cuts, contains many additions and improvements, and
includes the most important of the latest discoveries .

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR BEGINNERS. By Millicent
G. Fawcett. i8mo. 2s. 6d.

The following pages have been written mainly with the hope that a short
and elementary book might help to make Political Economy a more popular
study in boys b and girls ’ schools. In order to adapt the book especially for
school use, questions have been added at the end of each chapter.

LOGIC.

ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN LOGIC ; Deductive and Induc-
tive, with copious Questions and Examples, and a Vocabulary of
Logical Terms. By W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., Professor of
Logic in Owens College, Manchester. i8mo. 3 s. 6d.

In preparing these Lessons the author has attempted to show that Logic ,
even in its traditional form, can be made a highly useful subject of study,
and a pow erf id means of mental exercise. With this view he has avoided

the use of superfluous technical terms , and has abstained from entering

SCIENCE.

into questions of a purely speculative or metaphysical character. For the
puerile illustrations too often found in works on Logic, examples drawn
from the distinct objects and ideas treated in the natural and experimental
sciences have been generally substituted. At the end of almost every
Lesson will be found references to the works in which the student will most
profitably continue his reading of the subject treated , so that this little
volume may serve as a guide to a more extended course of study.

PHYSICS.

LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY PHYSICS. By Balfour
Stewart, F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owens
College, Manchester. With numerous Illustrations and Chromo-
liths of the Spectra of the Sun, Stars, and Nebulae. i8mo. 4 s. 6d.

A description , in an elementary manner , of the most important of those
laws which regulate the phenomena of nature. The active agents , heat ,
light , electricity , etc. , are regarded as varieties of energy , and the work is
so arranged that their relation to one another , looked at in this light , and
the paramount importance of the laws of energy are clearly brought out.
The volume contains all the necessary illustrations , and a plate represent-
ing the Spectra of Sun, Stars, and Nebula, forms a frontispiece.

MANUALS FOR STUDENTS.

Flower (W. H.)— AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OSTE-
OLOGY OF THE MAMMALIA. Being the substance of
the Course of Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons
of England in 1870. By W. H. Flower, F.R.S., F.R.C.S.,
Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology.
With numerous Illustrations. Globe 8vo. *]s. 6d.

Although the present work*tontciins the substance of a Course of Lectures,
the form has been changed, so as the better to adapt it as a handbook for
students. Theoretical views have been almost entirely excluded: and while

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

it is impossible in a scientific treatise to avoid the employment of technical
terms , it has been the author's endeavour to use no more than absolutely
necessary , and to exercise due care in selecting only those that seem most
appropriate , or which have received the sanction of general adoption. With

a very few exceptions the illustrations have been drawn expressly for this
work from specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Hooker (Dr.)— THE STUDENT’S FLORA OF THE
BRITISH ISLANDS. By J. D. Hooker, C.B., F.R.S.,
M.D., D.C.L., Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew. Globe
8vo. iol 6d.

The object of thus work is to supply students and field-botanists with a
fuller account of the Plants of the British Islands than the manuals
hitherto in use aim at giving. The Ordinal , Generic , and Specific
characters have been re-written , and are to a great extent original , and
drawn from living or dried specimens , or both.

Oliver (Professor)*— FIRST BOOK OF INDIAN BOTANY.
By Daniel Oliver, F.R.S., F.L.S., Keeper of the Herbarium
and Library of the Royal Gardens, Kew, and Professor of Botany
in University College, London. With numerous Illustrations.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d.

This manual is, in substance, the author's “ Lessons in Elementary
Botany ,” adapted for use in India. In preparing it he has had in view
the want, often fell, of some handy resume of Indian Botany, which might
be serviceable not only to residents of India, but also to any one about to
proceed thither, desirous of getting some preliminary idea of the Botany oj
that country.

Other volumes of these Manuals will follow.

SCIENCE.

Cooke (Josiah P., Jun.)— first principles of

CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY. By Josiah P. Cooke, Jun.,

Ervine Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard College’.

Crown 8 vo. 12s.

The object of the author in this book is to present the philosophy of
Chemistry in such a form that it can be made with profit the subject oj
College recitations , and furnish the teacher with the means of testing the
student s faithfulness and ability. With this view the subject has been
developed in a logical order , and the principles of the science are taught
independently of the experimental evidence on which they rest.

Johnson (S. W., M.A.)— how crops grow: a

Treatise on the Chemical Composition, Structure, and Life of the
Plant, for Agricultural Students. By S. W. Johnson, M.A.,
Professor of Analytical and Agricultural Chemistry in Yale College.
With Illustrations and Tables of Analyses. Revised, with Nume-
rous Additions, and adapted for English use by A. H. Church,
M.A. and W. T. Dyer, B.A., Professors at the Royal Agricultural
College, Cirencester. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

In order that this book may be complete in itself so far ds its special scope
is concerned , not only have the rudiments of Chemistry and structural
Botany been introduced , but a series of Experiments has been described , by
which the student , who has access to chemical apparatus and tests , may
become conversant with the most salient properties of the elements , and oj
those of their chief natural compounds , which constitute the food or the
materials of plants.

It has also been attempted to adapt the work in form and contents to the
wants of the class-room by a strictly systematic arrangement of topics , and
by division of the matter into convenient paragraphs.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Roscoe (H. E.)— SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. Six Lectures,
with Appendices, Engravings, Maps, and Chromolithographs.
By H. E. Roscoe, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Owens
College, Manchester. Royal 8vo. 21 sa

A Second Edition of these popular Lectures , containing all the most
recent discoveries and several additional Illustrations.

“ The lectures themselves furnish a most ad?nirable elementary treatise
on the subject , whilst by the insertion in appendices to each lecture dp
extracts from the most important published memoirs , the author has
rendered it equally valuable as a text book for advanced students.”- —
Westminster Review.

Thorpe (T. E.)_ A series of chemical problems,

for use in Colleges and Schools. Adapted for the preparation of
Students for the Government, Science, and Society of Arts Exa-
minations. With a Preface by Professor Roscoe. i8mo.
cloth, is.

In the Preface Dr. Roscoe says — ee My experience has led me to feel more
and more strongly that by no method can accuracy in a knowledge of
chemistry be more surely secured than by attention to the working of well-
selected problems , and Dr. Thorpe's thorough acquaintance with the wants
of the student is a sufficient guarantee that this selection has been carefully
made. I hitend largely to use these questions in my own classes , and I can
confidently recommend them to all teachers and students of the science.”

Wurtz.— A HISTORY OF CHEMICAL THEORY, from the
Age of Lavoisier down to the present time. By Ad. Wurtz.
Translated by Henry Watts, F.R.S. Crown 8vo. 6$,

MISCELLANE O US.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Abbott.— A SHAKESPEARIAN GRAMMAR. An Attempt to
illustrate some of the Differences between Elizabethan and Modern
English. By the Rev. E. A. Abbott, M.A., Head Master of the
City of London School. For the Use of Schools. Ne\v and En-
larged Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

The object of this, work is to furnish students of Shakespeare and Bacon
with a short systematic account of some points of difference between Eliza-
bethan syntax and our own . A section on Prosody is added , and Notes
and Questions .

The success which has attended the First and Second Editions of the

Shakespearian Grammar/’ and the demand for a Third Edition
within a year of the publication of the First , has encouraged the Author to
endeavour to make the work somewhat more useful, and to render it, as
far as possible, a complete book of reference for all difficulties of Shakespear-
ian syntax or prosody . For this purpose the whole of Shakespeare has
been re-read, and an attempt has been made to include within this Edition
the explanation of every idiomatic difficulty {where the text is not con-
fessedly corrupt) that comes within the province of a grammar ns distinct
from a glossary.

The great object being to make a useful book of reference for students ,
and especially for classes in schools , several Plciys have been indexed so
fully that with the aid of a glossary and historical notes the references will
serve for a complete commentary .

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

ATLAS OF EUROPE. GLOBE EDITION. Uniform in size
with Macmillan’s Globe Series, containing 45 Coloured Maps, on
a uniform scale and projection : with Plans of London and Paris,
and a copious Index. Strongly bound in half-morocco, with flexible
back, gs.

This Atlas includes all the countries oj Europe in a series of 48 Maps ,
drawn on the same scale , with an Alphabetical Index to the situation of
more than ten thousand places ; and the relation of the various maps and
countries to each other is defined in a general Key -map. The identity op

scale in all the maps facilitates the comparison of extent and distance , and
conveys a just impression op the magnitude of different countries. The
size suffices to show the provincial divisions , the railways and main roads ,
the principal rivers and mountain ranges. “ This Atlas fi writes the

British Quarterly, “ will be an invaluable boon for the school , the desk , or
the traveller's portmanteau .”

Bates & Lockyer.— A CLASS-BOOK OF GEOGRAPHY.
Adapted to the recent Programme of the Royal Geographical
Society. By II. W. Bates, Assistant Secretary to the Royal
Geographical Society, and J. N. Lockyer, F.R.A.S.

[In the Press.

CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. From Rollo to Edward
II. By the Author of “The Heir of Redclyffe.” Extra fcap.
8vo. Second Edition, enlarged. $s.

A Second Series nearly ready.

The endeavour has not been to chronicle facts , but to put together a series
of pictures of persons and events , so as to arrest the attention , and give
some individuality and distinctness to the recollection , by gathering together
details at the most memorable moments. The “ Cameos ” are intended as
a book for young people just beyond the elementary histories of England ,
and able to enter in some degree into the real spirit of events , and to be
struck with characters and scenes presented in some relief “ Instead op
dry details ,” says the Nonconformist, “we have living pictures, faithful,
vivid, and striking."

miscellaneo us.

Dclamotte. a BEGINNER’S DRAWING BOOK. By P. H.
Delamotte, F.S.A. Progressively arranged, with upwards of
Fifty Plates. Crown 8vo. Stiff covers. 2s. 6d.

This work is intended to give such instruction to Beginners in Drawing, ,
and to place before them copies so easy, that they may not find any obstacle
in making the first step. Thenceforward the lessons are gradually
progressive. Mechanical improvements too have lent their aid. The whole
of the Plates have been engraved by a new process , by means of which a
varying depth of tone— up to the present time the distinguishing character -
istic of pencil drawing — has been imparted to woodcuts .

D’Oursy and Feillet.— a FRENCH GRAMMAR AT
SIGHT, on an entirely new method. By A. D’Oursy and
A. Feillet. Especially adapted for Pupils preparing for Exa-
mination. Fcap. 8vo. cloth extra. 2s. 6d.

The method followed in this volume consists in presenting the grammar
as much as possible by synoptical tables, which , striking the eye at once , and
following throughout the same order — “ used — not used ; ” “ changes —
does not change ” — are easily remembered. The parsing tables will enable
the pupil to parse easily from the beginning. The exercises consist of
translations from French into English , and from English into French ;
and of a number of grammatical questions.

EUROPEAN HISTORY. Narrated in a Series of Historical Selec-
tions from the Best Authorities. Edited and arranged by E. M.
Sewell and C. M. Yonge. First Series, crown 8vo. 6s.
Second Series, 1088 — 1228. Crown 8vo. 6s.

When young children have acquired the outlines of History from abridg-
ments and catechisms , and it becomes desirable to give a more enlarged
view of the subject , in order to render it really useful and interesting , a
difficulty often arises as to the choice of books. Two courses are open , either
to take a general and consequently dry history of facts , such as Russefs
Modern Europe , or to choose some work treating of a particular period or
subject , such as the works of Macaulay and Froude . The former course

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS .

usually renders history uninteresting ; the latter is unsatisfactory , because
it is not sufficiently comprehensive. To remedy this difficulty selections ,
continuous and chronological-, have , in the present volume , been taken from
the larger works of Freeman , Milman , Palgrave , and others , which may
serve as distinct landmarks of historical reading. “ We know of scarcely
any thing f says the Guardian, of this volume, which is so likely to raise
to a higher level the average standard of English education

Freeman (Edward A.)— OLD- ENGLISH HISTORY.
By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., late Fellow of Trinity
College, Oxford. With Five Coloured Maps. New Edition.
Extra fcap. 8vo. half- bound. 6s.

* ‘ Its object is to show that clear , aecurate, and scientific views of history,
or indeed of any subject, may be easily given to children from the very first.
.... I have, I hope, shown that it is perfectly easy to teach children,
from the very first, to distinguish true history alike fro?n legend and from
wilfid invention , and also to understand the nature of historical authori-
ties and to weigh one statement against another. . . . I have throughout
striven \to connect the history of England with the general history oj
civilized Europe, and I have especially tried to make the book serve as an
incentive to a more accurate study of historical geography. ” — Preface.

Helfenstein (James). — a COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR
OF THE TEUTONIC LANGUAGES. Being at the same
time a Historical Grammar of the English Language, and comprising
Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Early English, Modern English, Icelandic
(Old Norse), Danish, Swedish, Old High German, Middle High
German, Modern German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Dutch.
By James Helfenstein, Ph.D. 8vo. iSs.

This work traces the different stages of development through which
the various Teutonic languages have passed, and the laws which have
regulated their growth. The reader is thus enabled to study the relation
which these languages bear to one another, and to the English language m
particular, to which special attention is devoted throughout. In the
chapters on Ancient and Middle Teutonic languages no grammatical form

MIS CELL ANE 0 US.

is omitted the knowledge of which is required for the study of ancient
literature, whether Gothic or Anglo-Saxon or Early English. To each
chapter is prefixed a sketch showing the relation of the Teutonic to the
cognate languages, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. Those who have mastered
the book will be in a position to proceed with intelligence to the more
elaborate works of Grimm, Bopp, Pott, Schleicher, and others .

Hole. — A GENEALOGICAL STEMMA OF THE KINGS OF
ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By the Rev. C. Hole. On
Sheet, is.

The different families are printed in distinguishing colours , thus
facilitating reference.

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. Compiled and
Arranged by Charles Hole, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
Second Edition, i8mo. neatly and strongly bound in cloth. 45-. 6d.

The inquiry is frequently made concerning an eminent man , when did
he live, or for what was he celebrated, or what biographies have we about
him ? Such information is concisely supplied in this Dictionary. It contains
more than 18,000 names. Extreme care has been bestowed on the verifica-
tion of the dates, and thus numerous errors current in previous works have
been corrected. Its size adapts it for the desk, portmanteau, or pocket.

“An invaluable addition to our manuals of reference, and from its
moderate price cannot fail to became as popular as it is useful! — Times.

Jephson. — SHAKESPEARE’S “TEMPEST.” With Glossarial
and Explanatory Notes. By the Rev. J. M. Jephson. i8mo.

is. 6d.

It is important to find some substitute for classical study, and it is
believed that such a substitute may be found in the Plays of Shakespeare.
Each sentence of Shakespeare becomes, like a sentence in Thucydides or
Cicero, a lesson in the origin and derivation of words, and in the funda-
mental rides of grammatical construction. On this principle the present
edition of the “ Tempest " has been prepared. The text is taken from the
“ Cambridge Shakespeare!

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

5®

M'Cosh (Rev. Principal). — the LAWS OF DISCUR-
SIVE THOUGHT. Being a Text-Book of Formal Logic. By
James M‘Cosh, D.D., LL.D. 8vo. 5^.

In this treatise the Notion ( with the Term and the Relation of Thought
to Language , ) will be found to occupy a larger relative place than in any
logical work written since the time of the famous “ Art of Thinking A

Oppen.— FRENCH READER. For the Use of Colleges and
Schools. Containing a graduated Selection from modern Authors
in Prose and Verse; and copious Notes, chiefly Etymological. By
Edward A. Oppen. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 4^ 6d.

This is a Selection from the best modern authors of France. Its dis-
tinctive feature consists in its etymological notes , connecting French with
the classical and modern languages , including the Celtic . This subject
has hitherto been little discussed even by the best-educated teachers.

A SHILLING BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS. A Reading Book
for Schools and General Readers. By the Author of “The Heir
of Redclyffe.” i8mo. cloth.

A record of some op the good and great deeds of all time , abridged from
the larger work of the same author in the Golden Treasury Series.

Sonnenschein and Meiklejohn. — THE ENGLISH
METHOD OF TEACHING TO READ. By A. Sonnenschein
andj. M. D. Meiklejohn, M.A. Fcap. 8vo.

Comprising.

| The Nursery Book, containing all the Two-Letter Words in the
Language, id.

The First Course, consisting of Short Vowels with Single
Consonants. 3^.

The Second Course, with Combinations and Bridges, con-
sisting of Short Vowels with Double Consonants. 4 d.

' The Third and Fourth Courses, consisting of Long
Vowels, and all the Double Vowels in the Language. 6d.

MISCELLANEO US.

A Series of Books in which an attempt is made to place the process 0
learning to read English on a scientific basis. This has been done by
separating the perfectly regular parts of the language from the irregular ,
and by giving the regular parts to the learner in the exact order of their
difficulty. The child begins with the smallest possible element, and adds to
that element one letter — in only one of its functions — at one time. Thus

the sequence is natural and complete.

Vaughan (C. M.) — a shilling book of words

FROM THE POETS. By C. M. Vaughan. i8mo. cloth.

It has been felt of late years that the children of our parochial schools ,
and those classes of our countrymen which they commonly represent , are
capable of being interested , and therefore benefited also , by something higher
in the scale of poetical composition than those brief and somewhat puerile
fragments to which their knowledge was formerly restricted. A n attempt
has here been made to supply the want by forming a selection at once
various and unambitious ; healthy in tone , just in sentiment , elevating in
thought , and beautiful in expression.

Thring. — Works by Edward Thring, M.A., Head Master o
Uppingham.

THE ELEMENTS OF GRAMMAR TAUGHT IN ENGLISH,
with Questions. Fourth Edition. i8mo. 2 s.

This little work is chiefly intended for teachers and learners. It took its
rise from questionings in National Schools , and the whole of the first pa > t
is merely the writing out in ordei the answers to questions which have been
used already with success. A chapter on Learning Language is especially
addressed to teachers.

THE CHILD’S GRAMMAR. Being the Substance of “ The
Elements of Grammar taught in English,” adapted for the Use of
Junior Classes. A New Edition. i8mo. is.

D 2

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

T hr in g — continued.

SCHOOL SONGS. A Collection of Songs for Schools. With the k
Music arranged for four Voices. Edited by the Rev. E. Thrins
and H. Riccius. Folio. 6d.

There is a tendency in schools to stereotype the forms of life. Any genial
solvent is valuable. Games do much ; but games do not penetrate to
domestic life , and are much limited by age. Music supplies the want r
The collection includes the “ Agnus Dei A Tennyson? s u Light Brigade A
Macaulay's “ IvryA Ov. among other pieces.

Trench (Archbishop). — HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENG-
LISH POETRY. Selected and Arranged, with Notes, by
R. C. Trench, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. Extra fcap. 8vo.
5j. 6d. Second Edtion.

This volume is called a “ Household Book A by this name implying that
it is a book for all — that there is nothing in it to prevent it from being
confidently placed in the hands of every member of the household. Speci-
mens of all classes of poetry are given , including selections from living
authors. The Editor has aimed to produce a book “ which the emigrant ,
finding room- for little not absolutely necessary , might yet find room for it
in his trunk , and the traveller in his knapsack , and that on some narrow
shelves where there are few books this might be one?'

“ The Archbishop has conferred in this delightful volume an important
gift on the whole English-speaking population of the world A — PALL Mall
Gazette.

Yonge (Charlotte M.).— A PARALLEL HISTORY OF
FRANCE AND ENGLAND : consisting of Outlines and Dates.
By Charlotte M. Yonge, Author of “The Heir of Redclyffe,”
“ Cameos of English History,” &c., &c. Oblong 4to. 3 s, 6d.

This tabular history has been drawn up to supply a want felt by many
teachers of some means of making their pupils realize what events in the
two countries were contemporary. A skeleton narrative has been con-
structed of the chief transactions in either country , placing a column
Between for what afected both alike , by which means it is hoped that young
people may be assisted in grasping the Mutual relation op events.

DIVINITY.

Abbott (Rev. E. A.)-— BIBLE LESSONS. By the Rev.
E. A. Abbott, M.A., Head Master of the City of London
School. Second Edition, crown 8vo. 4^ 6d.

This book is written in the form of dialogues carried on between a
teacher and pupil, and its main object is to make the scholar think for
himself The great bulk of the dialogues represents m the spirit, and
often in the words, the religious instruction which the author has been
m the habit of giving to the Fifth and Sixth Fqrms of the City of London
School ’

Cheyne (T. K.)— THE BOOK OF ISAIAH CHRONO-
LOGICALLY ARRANGED. An Amended Version, with
Historical and Critical Introductions and Explanatory Notes. By
T. K, Cheyne, M. A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Crown 8vo. *]s. 6d.

The object of this edition is simply to restore the probable meaning oj
Isaiah , so far as this can be expressed in modern English. The basis of
the version is the revised translation of 161 1, but no scruple has bun felt
in introducing altercition,s, wherever the true sense of the prophtcus
appeared to require it.

Eastwood.— THE BIBLE WORD-BOOK. A Glossary of
Old English Bible Words. By J. Eastwood, M. A., of St. John’s
College, and W. Aldis Wright, M.A., Trinity College, Cam-
bridge. i8mo. 53*. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

It is the object of this Glossary to explain and illustrate all such words ,
phrases, and constructions, in the A uthorized Version of the Old and Neat)
Testaments and the Apocrypha , and in the Book of Common Prayer, as
are either obsolete or archaic. Full explanations are supplied, and these
illustrated by numerous citations from the elder writers. Ait index of
editions quoted is appended. Apart from its immediate subject, this work
serves to illustrate a well-marked period in the history of the English
language. It is thus of distinct philological value.

GOLDEN TREASURY PSALTER. Students’ Edition. Being an
Edition of “The Psalms Chronologically Arranged, by Four
Friends,” with briefer Notes. i8mo. 31. 6d.

In making this abridgment of “ The Psalms Chronologically Arranged,”
the editors have endeavoured to meet the requirements op readers of a
different class from those for whom tl.e larger edition was intended. Some
who found the large book useful jor private reading, have asked for an
edition of a smaller size and at a lower price, for family use, while at the
same time some Teachers in Public Schools have suggested that it would be
convenient for them to have a simpler book , which they could put into the
hands oj younger pupils.

Hardwick. — A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Middle Age. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication
of Luther. By Archdeacon LIardwick. Edited by Francis
Procter, M.A. With Four Maps constructed for this work by
A. Keith Johnston, Second Edition. Crown 8vo. ioj. 6d. .

The ground-plan of this treatise coincides in many points with one
adopted at the close of the last century in the colossal work of Schrockh, and
since that time by others of his thoughtful countrymen ; but in arranging
the materials a very different course has frequently been pursued. With
regard to the opinions of the author, he is willing to avow distinctly that he
has construed history with the specific prepossessions of an Englishman and
a member of the English Church. The reader is constantly referred to
the authorities , both original and critical, on which the statements are
founded.

DIVINITY.

Hardwick. — continued.

A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING THE
REFORMATION. By Archdeacon Hardwick. Revised by
Francis Procter, M.A. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. ior. 6d.
This volume is intended as a sequel and companion to the “ History 0/
the Christian Church during the Middle Age ." The author's earnest
wish has been to give the reader a trustworthy version of those stirring
incidents which mark the Reformation period , without relinquishing his
former claim to characterise peculiar systems, persons, and events according
to the shades and colours they assume , when contemplated from an English
point of view , and by a member of the Church of England.

Maclear. — Works by the Rev. G. F. MACLEAR, B.D., Head
Master of King’s College School, and Preacher at the Temple
Church.

A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. Fifth
Edition, with Four Maps. i8mo. cloth. 4^. 6d.

This volume forms a Class-book of Old Testament History from the
earliest tunes to those of Ezra and Nehemiah . In its preparation the
most recent authorities have been consulted, and wherever it has appeared
useful, Notes have been subjoined illustrative of the Text, and, for the sake
of more advanced students, references added to larger works. The Index
has been so arranged as to form a concise dictionary of the persons and
places mentioned in the course of the narrative ; while the maps, which have
been prepared with considerable care at Stanford'' s Geographical Establish-
ment, will, it is hoped, materially add to the value and usefulness of the
Book .

A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY, including
the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. With Four Maps.
Third Edition. i8mo. cloth. $s. 6d.

A sequel to the author' s Class-book of Old Testament History, continuing
the narrative from the point at which it there ends , and carrying it on to
the close of St. Paul's second imprisonment at Rome. In its preparation,
as in that of the for?ner volume, the most recent and trustworthy authorities

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Maclear (Rev. G. F., B.D.) — continued.

have been consulted notes subjoined , and references to larger works added.
It is thus hoped that it may prove at once an useful class-book and a
convenient co?npanion to the study of the Greek Testament.

A SHILLING BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY, for
National and Elementary Schools. With Map. i8mo. cloth.

A SHILLING BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY, for
National and Elementary Schools. With Map. i8mo. cloth.

These works have been carefully abridged from the author's larger
manuals.

CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND. Second Edition. i8mo. cloth. 2s. 6d.

This may be regarded as a sequel to the Class-books of Old and New
Testament History. Like them , it is furnished with notes and references
to larger works , and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the
higher for?ns of our Public Schools , to supply a suitable manual of
instruction in the chief doctrines of the English Church , and a useful
help in the preparation of Candidates for Confirmation.

A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs, for Junior
Classes and Schools. i8mo. 6d.

THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION. A Sequel to the Class
Book of the Catechism. For the use of Candidates for Confirma-
tion. With Prayers and Collects. i8mo. 3 d.

Maurice.-— THE LORD’S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND
THE COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and School-
masters. By the Rev. F. D. Maurice. To which is added the
Order of the Scriptures. i8mo. is.

Procter.— A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYER, with a Rationale of its Offices. By Francis Procter,
M.A. Ninth Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vc,
ioj-. 6d.

DIVINITY.

In the course of the last twenty years the whole question of Liturgical
knowledge has been reopened with great learning and accurate research ;
and it is mainly with the view of epitomizing extensive publications , and
correcting the errors and misconceptions which had obtained currency ,
that the present volume has been put together .

Procter and Maclear.— an elementary intro-
duction TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
Re-arranged and supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning
and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By the Rev. F. Procter
and the Rev. G. F. Maclear. Fourth Edition. i8mo. 2s. 6d.

As in the other Class-books of the series , notes have also been subjoined,
and references given to larger works , and it is hoped that the volume will
be found adapted for use in the higher forms oj our Public Schools , and a
suitable manual for those preparing for the Oxford and Cambridge local
examinations. This new Edition has been considerably altered, and
several important additions have been made . Besides a re-arrangement
of the work generally, the Historical Portion has been supplemented by an
Explanation of the Morning and Evening Prayer and of the Litany.
PSALMS OF DAVID CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED.
BY FOUR FRIENDS. An Amended Version, with Historical
Introduction and Explanatory Notes. Second Edition, with
Additions and Corrections. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

To restore the Psalter as far as possible to the order in which the Psalms
were written, — to give the division of each Psalm into strophes, of each
strophe into the lines which composed it, — to amend the errors of translation,
is the object of the present Edition. Professor Ewald’s works, especially
that on the Psalms , have been extensively consulted.

This book has been used with satisfaction by masters for private work in
higher classes in schools.

Ramsay. — THE CATECHISER’S MANUAL; or, the Church
Catechism illustrated and explained, for the use of Clergymen,
Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By the Rev. Arthur Ramsay,
M.A. Second Edition. i8mo. is. 6d.

A clear explanation of the Catechism, by way of Question and Answer.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.

Simpson. — AN EPITOME OF THE HISTORY OF THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By William Simpson, M.A.
Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d.

A compendious suznmary of Church Historv.

Swainson. — A HANDBOOK to BUTLER’S ANALOGY. By
C. A. Swainson, D. D., Canon of Chichester. Crown 8vo. is. 6d.

This manual is designed to serve as a handbook or road-book to the
Student in reading the Analogy , to give the Student a sketch or outline map
of the country on which he is entering , and to point out to him matters of
interest as he Passes along.

WestCOtt. — A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY
OF THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DURING
THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES. By Brooke Foss West-
cott, B.D., Canon of Peterborough. Third Edition, revised.
Crown 8vo. ioj'. 6d.

The Author has endeavoured to connect the history of the New Testament
Canon with the growth and consolidation of the Church , and to point out
the relation existing between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of
its component parts , and- the whole mass of Christian literature. Such a
method of inquiry will convey both the truest notion of the connexion of the
written Word with the living Body of Christy and the surest conviction of
its divine authority.

Of this work the Saturday Review writes: “ Theological students , and
not they only , but the general public , owe a deep debt of gratitude to
Mr. Westcott for bringing this subject fairly before them in this candid ana

comprehensive essay Asa theological work it is at once perfectly fair

and impartial , and imbued with a thoroughly religious spirit ; and as a
manual it exhibits , in a lucid form and in a narrow compass , the results
of extensive research and accurate thought. We cordially recommend it.”

DIVINITY.

Westcott (Canon) — continued ’

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS.
By Brooke Foss Westcott, B.D. Third Edition. Crown 8vo.
ioj'. 6d.

This book is intended to be an Introduction to the Study of the Gospels .
The author has made it a point carefully to study the researches of the great
writers , and consciously to neglect none . There is an elaborate discussion
appended “ On the Primitive Doctrine of Inspiration!

A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH
BIBLE. By Brooke Foss Westcott, B.D. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d.

“ The first trustworthy account we have had of that unique and mar -
vellous monument of the piety of our ancestors .” — Daily News.

THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account of the
Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian
Churches. Third Edition. By Brooke Foss Westcott, B.D.
i8mo. cloth, 4s. 6d.

The present book is an attempt to answer a request , which has been made
from time to time , to place in a simple form , for the use of general readers ,
the substance of the author's ‘ ‘ History of the Canon of the New Testament .”
An elaborate and comprehensive Introduction is followed by chapters on
the Bible of the Apostolic Age; on the Growth of the New Testament ; the
Apostolic Fathers ; the Age of the Apologists : the First Christian Bible;
the Bible Proscribed and Restored ; the Age op Jerome and Augustine ;
the Bible of the Middle Ages in the West and in the East , and in the
Sixteenth Century. Two appendices on the History of the Old T estament
Canon before the Christian Era , and on the Contents of the most ancient
MSS. of the Christian Bible , complete the volume.

THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts on its
Relation to Reason and History. By Brooke Foss Westcott,
B.D. New Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4 s. 6d.

6 o

EDUCATIONAL LOONS.

This Essay is an endeavour io consider some of the elementary truths
of Christianity as a miraculous Revelation , from the side 0/ History and
Reason. If the arguments which are here adduced are valid, they will go
far to prove that the Resurrection , with all that it includes , is the key to
the history of man, and the complement oj reason.

Wilson.— AN ENGLISH, HEBREW, AND CHALDEE
LEXICON AND CONCORDANCE, to the more Correct
Understanding of the English translation of the Old Testament,
by reference to the Original Hebrew. By William Wilson,
D.D., Canon of Winchester, late Fellow of Queen’s College,
Oxford. Second Edition, carefully Revised. 4to. cloth. 25^.

The aim of this work is, that it should be useful to clergymen and all
persons engaged in the study of the Bible, even when they do not possess a
knowledge of Hebrew ; while able Hebrew scholars have borne testimony to
the help that they themselves have found in it.

BOOKS ON ED UCA TIO AT.

BOOKS ON EDUCATION.

Arnold. — A FRENCH ETON ; OR, MIDDLE CLASS
EDUCATION AND THE STATE. By Matthew Arnold.
Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 2s. 6d.

* * A very interesting dissertation on the system of secondary instruction
in France , and on the advisability of copying the system in England A —
Saturday Revif.w.

SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES ON THE CONTINENT.
8 vo. ioj. 6d.

The Author was in 1865 charged by the Schools Inquiry Commissioners
with the task of investigating the system of education for the middle and
upper classes in France , Italy , Germany , and Switzerland. In the dis-
charge of this task he was on the Continent nearly seven months , and
during that time he visited the four countries named and made a careful
study of the matters to which the Commissioners had directed his attention.
The present volume contains the report which he made to them. It is here
adapted to the use of the general reader.

ESSAYS ON A LIBERAL EDUCATION. Edited by tne Rev.
F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R. S., Assistant Master at Harrow,
late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Hon. Fellow of
King’s College, London. Second Edition. 8vo. cloth, ioa 6d.

Contents : — History of Classical Education , by Charles S. Parker ,
M.A. ; Theory of Classical Education , by Henry Sedgwick , M.A. ;

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS .

Liberal Education in Universities , by fohn Seeley , M.A. ; Teaching by
means of Grammar , by A. E. Bowen , M.A. ; Greek and Latin Verse-
Composition , //z<? Rev. E. W. Farrar ; Natural Science in Schools , by

y M. Wilson , M.A., E.G.S.; The Teaching of English, by y W. Hales ,
M.A, ; Education of the Reasoning Faculties , by W. fohnson , ;

The present Social Results of Classical Education , by Lord Houghton .

The Authors have sought to hasten the expansion and improvement oj
liberal education by showing in what light some of the most interesting
questions of Educational Reform are viewed by men who have had
opportunities for forming a judgment respecting them , and several of
whom have been for some time engaged in the work of education at our
Universities and Schools ,

Farrar.— ON SOME DEFECTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL
EDUCATION. A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution.
With Notes and Appendices. Crown 8vo. is.

jex-Blake. — A VISIT TO SOME AMERICAN SCHOOLS
AND COLLEGES. By Sophia Jex-Blake. Crown 8vo. cloth.
6s.

“ In the following pages I have endeavoured to give a simple and accurate
account of what I saw during a series of visits to some of the Schools and
Colleges in the United States. ... I wish simply to give other teachers an
opportunity of seeing through my eyes what they cannot perhaps see for
themselves , and to this end I have recorded just such particulars as I should
myself care to know.”— Author’s Preface.

4 4 Miss Blake gives a living picture of the Schools and Colleges them-
selves in which that education is carried on.” — Pall Mall Gazette.

Quain (Richard, F.R.S.) — ON SOME DEFECTS IN
GENERAL EDUCATION. By Richard Quain, F.R.S.
Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d.

BOOKS ON EDUCATION.

Having been charged by the College of Surgeons with the delivery of the
Hunterian Oration for 1869, the Author has availed himself of the
occasion to bring under notice some dejects in the general education of the
country , which , in his opinion , effect injuriously all classes of the people %
and not least the members of his own profession. The earlier pages of the
address contain a short notice of the genius and labours of John Hunter ,
but the subject of education will be found to occupy the larger part— from
page twelve to the end.

Thring.— EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. By the Rev. Edward
Thring, M.A., Head Master of Uppingham. Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. cloth. 53-. 6d.

Youmans. — MODERN CULTURE : its True Aims and Require-
ments. A Series of Addresses and Arguments on the Claims ot
Scientific Education. Edited by Edward L. Youmans, M.D.
Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

Contents : — Professor Tyndall on the Study of Physics ; Dr. Daubeny
on the Study of Chemistry ; Professor Henfrey on the Study of Botany ;
Professor Huxley on the Study of Zoology ; Dr. J. Paget on the Study oj
Physiology ; Dr. Whewell on the Educational History of Science; Dr.
Faraday on the Education oj the Judgment; Dr. Hodgson on the Study
of Economic Science ; Mr. Herbert Spencer on Political Education;
Professor Masson on College Education and Self Education; Dr. Youmans
on the Scientific Study of Human Nature. A n Appendix contains extracts
from distinguished authors, and from the Scientific Evidence given before
the Public Schools Commission.

LONDON :

R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,

BREAD STREET HILL.

S ri<c>e.

• v, 1

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Full text of "European history,narrated in a series of historical selections from the best authorities."

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